


Shepherd of the Damned

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Brainwashing, Explicit Sexual Content, Extremely Dubious Consent, Gratuitous Smut, Horror, Mind Control, Multi, Multiple Pairings, Rape/Non-con Elements, Violence, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-06-05 10:33:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 55,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6701371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're called to Alaska on a desperate last-ditch effort to find seven missing hikers. They don't even think twice about going. This is their job. They put themselves in danger every day to protect the people that need them. But never like this.</p>
<p>They number six. It begins with one. </p>
<p>It's not going to stop until they're all consumed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Emily – Give Me a Sign

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta, Greeneyedconstellations!
> 
>  
> 
> **Where once was light / Now darkness falls / Where once was love / Love is no more / Don't say - goodbye / Don't say - I didn't try...**
> 
> **These tears we cry / Are falling rain / For all the lies / You told us / The hurt, the blame!**
> 
> **And we will weep / To be so alone**
> 
> **We are lost!**
> 
> **We can never go home.**
> 
> \- Emiliana Torrini, _Gollum's Song_

Emily’s not quite drunk, not yet, but she’s barely sober and it’s a heady enough mix that she can’t help but laugh at what she’s observing. The boys are watching a movie. Well, Reid is watching a movie. Morgan is slumped on the couch next to him with dark shades sneaking down the bridge of his nose and exposing eyes that are tightly shut, if the game hasn’t already been given away by his slack mouth and the soft but rumbling snores issuing from within.

Reid doesn’t seem to care. He’s got the popcorn balanced between his hip and Morgan’s thigh, and every few minutes he has to steady it because he’s reminded of yet another exciting thing that he needs to tell them all about _right the fuck now_ ; bolting upright and almost sending it flying into the back of JJ’s head. He saves it every time, barely, and it’s a fascinating process to watch.

Emily’s on the floor, her long legs carefully laid out straight, and she’s busy trying to look anywhere but the screen as a mawkishly costumed creature lunges out of the backseat of a land rover and tries to take a chunk out of the protagonist.

“They’re actually animatronics,” Reid is trying to explain, using one purple-socked foot to prod at JJ’s arm. He’s wearing what Emily would generously describe as his ‘comfiest clothes’ and they sag around his legs and ass where they’ve gone thin and worn in the wash. JJ is in the same. Morgan is dressed as usual. Emily is… overdressed. As always. She’s also sorely envious of their comfort. “See, look. They’re not costumes. Did you know that they considered using CGI for the—”

“Spence,” JJ says, jabbing her elbow into his calf. “Seriously. I see enough horror at work. Why can’t we watch something happy?” Reid pouts. Emily laughs, pressing the cool bottle to her lips and tilting her head back to swallow the bitter liquid. JJ turns plaintive blue eyes on her, sitting on the sidelines observing, and she can’t help but feel drawn in by _that_ expression. There’s really no saying no to JJ when she wants something badly enough to Bambi-eye you over it. “Em, help me out.”

“Can the werewolves, Reid,” Emily suggests, and Reid looks shattered. It’s a Bambi-eye stare-off between him and JJ now, and Emily’s sorely glad that the remote is safely on the armrest by Morgan’s side and not hers. “I’ve never been a fan.”

He blinks. “How can you not be? Along with vampires, werewolves are the staple of the horror genre. Herodotus, Pausanius, Ovid, Virgil; they’re the quintessential ‘spooky thing goes bump in the night.’ Did you know the wolf was originally associated with prostitution? One theory of the wolf that raised the founding brothers of Rome–Lupa, the mother wolf, may in fact have been a prostitute.”

Emily takes a swig of her beer because she is nowhere near drunk enough for this bullshit, good god. “If we get him drunk enough, do you think he’ll shut up?” she asks JJ, who leans across Morgan and swipes the remote.

“Right, that’s enough werewolves for you tonight,” she says, but there’s affection in her tone. “We’re watching _Mulan_. I told you we should have to begin with.”

Reid’s smile slips, but only for a moment. He’s the proverbial happy-go-lucky spirit, and Emily watches as he immediately bounces back from his disappointment. “Did you know the cannons used in the avalanche scene are actually—”

The DVD player spits out Reid’s movie with a whirr.

“Hey, was watching that,” Morgan mumbles loudly.

Reid turns to him, incredulous. “You were asleep. You were _snoring_. You exhibited rapid eye movement.”

“Was just resting my eyes, Pretty Boy. Gimme the remote.”

Emily drowns her sniggers in the neck of her beer bottle and wonders why anyone would ever believe that people actually grow up.

 

* * *

 

There’s a moment, on the jet flying home from yet another case, when Emily looks up and sees something she’s not entirely sure she understands. If it were anyone else, she’d know exactly what it was, but it’s _Hotch_.

Morgan’s asleep with his earphones on and the dull throbbing of a loud bass beat floating in the still air; JJ’s curled up on a seat with her chin on her knee and a blanket over her lap, head bobbing with the shift of turbulence under the wings. Rossi is sprawled, taking up two seats and mouth gaping open wide enough that she can count the fillings on his back teeth if she feels so inclined. Reid is on the couch, laying like he’s a puppet with his strings cut and limbs tangled, the endlessly open way he positions himself when he’s completely assured of his own safety. There’s a book cracked open on his chest, his eyes are shut, and his blanket is pooled to the side where it’s slipped off his knees. She loves him completely and absolutely in that second of seeing him like this. Hotch steps out the kitchenette with a coffee, scans the jet—Emily closes her eyes and relaxes, confident in the ability of the dim lighting to hide her—and then steps over to him.

She watches as the man’s mouth quirks in a smile that’s a touch too warm and ever-so-slightly silly and re-covers the younger agent with the scratchy blanket, tucking it around his shoulders.

His hand lingers as he does so.

When he walks past her to get to his own seat, she keeps pretending to be asleep and tries not to wonder what it means.

 

* * *

 

Emily’s never been one to tiptoe around the big things. She invites Reid to lunch, plops him down on a bench outside his favourite coffee-shop (small, cluttered and slightly musty smelling, and that’s just so fucking _him_ ), and ignores the way he tightens his coat around his shoulders. It’s cold but not _that_ cold yet.

“Are you sleeping with Hotch?” she asks, and he chokes on his coffee.

“No!” he yelps, and his ears turn pink. His gaze slips away. _Liar!_ “Not… no.”

“Not yet?” she adds helpfully, and makes sure to smile so he knows she’s being helpful. He looks cornered.

“Not… not yet, no.” There are those Bambi-eyes again. Aimed right at her and, damnit, they still work. She hands him her scarf and he winds it around his neck gratefully as he talks while looking everywhere but at her. “Please don’t tell anyone. We’re not… we’re not anything. He’s just…”

 _Not the kinda man who starts something he doesn’t intend upon finishing_ , she thinks, but doesn’t say it, because she suddenly has the firm realization that it’s very probably Hotch doing the courting here, and she imagines that courting Spencer fricken Reid would be like courting a particularly skittish bunny rabbit.

“Your secret is safe with me,” she promises him, and they walk back to the BAU together.

“Alaska again.” Garcia’s hands are shaking, she’s panicking, trying to hide her fear in the clatter of bright bangles and beads on her arms. Her eyes are on Morgan, now Reid, now Morgan again, and finally Hotch. “Ooooh, I don’t like Alaska. Why do you have to go to Alaska? Surely there are better qualified teams? You guys don’t… well. It’s cold there. And foresty. There’s no _wi-fi_.”

“We have seven missing hikers and two dead. You’re not coming this time, Garcia. We’re going to be in the Tongass National Forest for this one, in a base camp the rangers have set up there,” Hotch says grimly, and the screen behind Garcia’s back flares to life. Emily knows that her face doesn’t change, but everyone else’s does. “They’ve requested our urgent assistance with stopping the men responsible for this.”

“What the fuck,” Morgan says flatly, his eyes widening.

Reid looks away, throat working busily as he struggles to swallow around a nausea that Emily can feel threatening in her own gut. “That’s… Hotch, that’s not a human’s work.”

“It is.” JJ stares down at the file, her fine hair hiding her expression, but her voice is still clear. “Animals have damaged the bodies before they were found, but the coroners say that the majority of the damage was human in nature.”

Rossi’s shoulder brushes hers as he leans forward, his eyes narrowing. He’s not pulling back like the rest of them are, but his skin is green. “Majority? These people have been torn apart. You’re saying _humans_ did that?”

“Cannibals?” Reid asks, and the sickness is replaced by a sharp curiosity. In an instant, he’s switched from shocked onlooker to hardened agent, and all because they’ve handed him a puzzle. His mind fascinates her, almost as much as it mystifies her. “They look relatively well preserved, considering that they’re estimated to have been dead for… two weeks, according to the coroner’s report. Their hearts are missing.”

Garcia wails softly, the noise barely audible. “I _hate_ Alaska.”

Rossi’s mouth twitches. “Join the club.”


	2. Morgan – Go Get Your Gun

Funny thing about working with Reid: he makes the impossible seem possible, every day. Morgan has watched the kid plow through a pile of books almost taller than him in an afternoon. He knows stuff no one should just _know_. He’s a statistical improbability in corduroy and ugly cardigans, and he’s not afraid to tell you all about it. He also has a knack for making things seem absolutely fucking impossible.

“Tongass National Forest is actually the largest national state forest,” Reid says cheerily on the float plane, pressing his face against the window to peer down at the acres of green, barely visible through the cloud drifting around them. When he turns his head to look back at the team, his cheek is pink from the cold glass and shiny-wet from the condensation of his breath. “In acres, it’s some 16,576,303 square miles. One of the largest intact rainforests in the world actually, and to keep it so, locals have fought bitterly against the implementation of more roadways, which will impede our work. We’re going at a terrible time for weather as well. Late November is notorious for heavy snowfall as well as sudden thaws, causing avalanches, road collapse, flash flooding, not to mention the fact that we only have eight hours of sunlight per day—do you know how long it would take us to search even a fraction of that, depending on weather, man hours, familiarity with the area?”

“Nope,” Morgan grunts, pulling his coat tighter around and huddling into it. It’s a wonder Reid can even talk through the chattering of his teeth, even in the heated interior of the small plane. “But I bet you’re gonna tell us.”

And he does. And then he goes on. And on. And on. And on.

“Reid,” Hotch says finally, and Reid shuts up like a switch has been flicked, beaming at their boss. Morgan stares at the both of them. Reid _never_ shuts up like that for him. He’s going to need to get tips from Hotch; clearly the man has some control over their co-worker.

Or it’s just some kind of Hotch magic.

Morgan sighs and reluctantly flips the casefile back open, finding himself faced with the broken remains of what was once a human with dreams and hopes and family…

They’re going to find this sick fuck, Reid’s misgivings be damned. And they’re going to bring justice to his victims.

 

* * *

 

Alaska is beautiful. Even with the horror lurking in the pine trees that stretch beyond imagination, it’s beautiful. Morgan can appreciate that. He can also appreciate that, given a choice, he’d rather never come here again. By the wave of gasps and complaints as they step out the plane and into the Alaskan air, the others agree with him. And really, it’s not fair, the only one of them that actually pulls off winter wear is _JJ_. The rest of them look floofy. Even Hotch.

The sheriff meets them at a cabin that’s on the good side of ‘almost shabby,’ and Morgan has instant misgivings about the man. There’s just something about the way he stands; still and watchful, like he’s about to meld back into the surroundings like a ghost and slip away… it gets Morgan’s back up.

“Well, I’m glad you could make it,” he says after Hotch introduces them, his gaze lingering on Reid overly long and the women even longer, and there’s another reason Morgan doesn’t like him. JJ smiles back placidly. Emily looms, her scowl losing some fierceness since she’s wearing a thick blue parka that makes her look like a gnome, as well as rainbow gloves that just _have_ to be a gift from Reid. “Although, not everyone is. You know the kinda place we are. Small. Isolated. Some don’t like outsiders.”

They wait for Hotch’s cue. Morgan can already tell this is going to be one of those cases where they spend just as much time smoothing ruffled feathers of locals and it grates on him. He hates cases like this. They’re there to do a job, damnit, and now Hotch and JJ are going to spend most of it playing politics.

“We only wish we were here under better circumstances,” Hotch is saying, his body turned to encompass the whole team, preventing the sheriff from shutting them out of the conversation. Rossi hovers near his elbow, oozing with vibes of ‘this is fine.’ The sheriff relaxes, barely. “Can you spare people to take our team where we need to go?”

It’s a split second movement, but Morgan spots it. No one else seems to. The sheriff turns his head, tilting it upwards slightly, as though scenting the air. Then he’s back, shrugging easily and smiling with far too many teeth on show.

If Morgan had hackles like Clooney, they’d be up right now.

“I can,” the man says in his slow manner. “But, unfortunately, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to get down to the coroner’s. We only have one in the area, you see, and the road got somewhat messed up like in the last storm. It’s the same one that trapped them hikers up here and prevented us from realizing they hadn’t come back in an orderly fashion.”

“Does that happen often?” Reid is asking, even as he’s tugging _another_ coat out of his bag and forcing it over the two he’s already wearing. Even from here, Morgan can see him still shivering. _You can take the kid from Vegas_ , Morgan thinks with a spark of amusement. “The damage to the roads?”

“Relatively. They’re pretty impassable this time of year. Weather can change fast and it can change deadly. I got men waiting to hike up to where the bodies were found and the missing hikers’ campsite with you people; I really must ask that you don’t travel anywhere away from the cabin and base camp alone. There are…” he pauses, and his gaze flicks to the women again. Morgan sees Reid stiffen, almost bristling, and the sight is oddly comforting. If even Reid is picking up on some weird vibe, then Morgan sure as shit isn’t imagining it. Rossi and Hotch’s faces don’t change, but then, they wouldn’t. “It can be unexpectedly dangerous here, is all. Wildlife. You know.”

“The wolf population here is actually at an all-time low due to logging,” Reid says, tucking his gloved hands into his sleeves. “I mean, there are bears but the risk to a well-armed, large group such as ours is almost negligible…”

“You’ll be splitting up,” the sheriff says, and silence pervades. “Body dump sites were pretty far apart, as was the hikers’ camp, and we don’t have the daylight or the time to be marching from one to the other. You can do your profiling thing in smaller teams, yea?” Hotch breathes slowly, eyes scanning them. Morgan meets his gaze, trying to wordlessly communicate. _Yeah this might be how we do thinks back home,_ he tries to say, _but I don’t think we should here._ He doesn’t want to send any of his team off with strangers if they’re anything like this man.

“Understandable,” Hotch says, and Morgan almost shouts with frustration. “It’s imperative we get to work immediately.”

The sheriff nods. He looks up. Reid follows his gaze, tilting his head back and blinking at the weak morning sunlight. “Yeah,” the man says, looking back down and eyeing Reid strangely. “Looks like rough weather coming.” He walks off, towards the path leading to the base camp, Hotch following after a beat.

“Something stinks about this,” Emily mutters. JJ shushes her, eyes calm.

Morgan can’t help but agree.

 

* * *

 

Hotch gets Prentiss. JJ gets Rossi. Morgan wouldn’t mind having Reid, but the kid really isn’t built for the cold. Or the hiking. Or just… anything physical, really.

“It’s really cold,” Reid points out about ten minutes into their hike, and Morgan fights the desire to say ‘No shit, genius.’

“Quite a long way isn’t it,” Reid tries to say between gasping breaths to one of the rangers walking with them. The man doesn’t answer, and Reid goes back to trying to breathe without wheezing. He fails. Morgan’s really gotta get him back on the running track; if there’s ever a situation when Reid needs to outrun anything more than a three-legged cocker spaniel, he’s going to be in a world of trouble.

“Really cold,” he mumbles later after Morgan makes the mistake of asking him how he’s going, pulling his head into his thick parka like a turtle and blinking out sadly at them from the depths of the material. Morgan sighs.

He misses Prentiss.

“So, you guys got any leads?” Morgan asks one of the rangers when the sounds of Reid being physically inept become almost too much to handle. The woman says nothing, her gaze fixed coldly ahead, and there’s a quiet anger radiating from her that sets his teeth on edge. “No one hanging around acting suspicious? No outsiders in the area?”

“Only outsiders in the area are you and yours,” the other ranger snaps, narrowing slate grey eyes at them and sneering at Reid. “Ain’t no one here besides jumped up politicians thinking they can play at being cops who thought getting you here was a good idea.”

Fantastic.

“Well, if the unsub is someone from your community…” Reid begins. Morgan flinches as the two rangers turn and glare at him, cutting him off mid-sentence. He shrinks back further into his coat, looking plaintively at Morgan for help.

Morgan really, really hates Alaska.

 

* * *

 

He corners the male ranger once they reach the area where the first body was found. Reid floats off, the woman following him reluctantly at a distance. “You don’t like me, that’s alright,” Morgan says, trying not to be too intimidating in his posture. “I don’t need you to like me. But we’re here because you have seven missing people—including a sixteen-year-old. You need us. Are you really going to turn down any help you can get at this point?”

The man stills, his top lip twitching. “Not turning your help down,” he says finally, breaking eye-contact first. There’s a scuff of a boot behind them, the woman. Morgan glances at her, noting her sharp gaze locked on her partner. They’re working off each other’s body language, attuned. Morgan recognises that. He works like that with his team every day. It takes a long time to get that kind of rapport, and it’s not easily put aside when a government team rocks up on the doorstep telling them they can do their job better.  “Just don’t think you can help as much as Sheriff Shades thinks you can. You don’t have enough information.”

“That can be dangerous in these places,” the woman adds. June, her nametag reads. The man isn’t wearing one. Morgan’s pretty sure he didn’t even introduce himself to begin with. “We don’t go into the forest without information. Weather predictions, animal populations. To do so would be suicide. And they just pluck you outta DC and expect you to know our people? We’re not like you. We wouldn’t live here if we were.”

Morgan smiles, sensing the ice thawing between them, just slightly. It helps that he’d barely flinched at the long, upwards hike. Next to Reid, he was probably looking pretty capable right now. That was fine. They seemed to respect that. They’d learn soon enough to respect Reid’s brain as well. “People everywhere aren’t so different that we can’t do our job,” he explains. “And we don’t want to step on any toes. We just want those people home safe, and your killer behind bars where they belong.”

The woman’s mouth twitches in an almost smile. “Yeah,” she says finally. “We got similar aims.”

“Morgan!” shouts Reid, a pitch of excitement in his voice that means he’s found something _fascinating_. To him, anyway. Morgan looks around, not seeing him, the sharp upward twists of the area making his voice echo oddly around the loose shale clearing. Trees and shrubs obscure their view.

“This way,” June says, turning and jogging carefully over the loose ground. Morgan follows, somewhat more cautiously. She steps aside, holding an arm out as though to help him down a path lined with gravel run-off from snow-melt uphill. He thanks her, but lowers himself down it on his own. He needs to keep that capable appearance, at least until they see them in action. As a result, he’s the first one to step out and find Reid crouching in front of a pile of rocks, a blue latex-free glove pulled over his woollen ones, prodding at the pile and shifting them carefully.

“Rocks?” Morgan asks, but as he draws closer he can see what’s drawn Reid’s attention. Unlike the rest of the clearing, these aren’t the small rocks and pebbles left by running water. They’re big, heavy, and stacked precariously.

“It’s almost like a burial cairn,” Reid says, standing and tugging the glove off, tucking it in his pocket. “Why didn’t the locals see this when they were removing the first body? We should get cadaver-sniffing dogs out here; we could have more victims.”

Morgan opens his mouth to answer, but Reid takes that moment to shift back onto his heels, revealing the shadowed greenery behind them. Someone hollers, _“Don’t!”_ and that doesn’t make any sense, except when Reid shifts, Morgan finds himself staring into the dark eyes of a wolf that’s far too fucking big and much too fucking close.

Reid blinks. Turns. Morgan notes hysterically that the wolf is easily up to his chest in height and _what the fuck_.

The wolf leaps. Reid falls, hitting the ground with a crack that silences his startled yelp before it begins.

He goes limp.

Morgan pulls his gun. The wolf looks at him, almost grinning, jaws snapping unerringly towards Reid’s unprotected throat. Morgan fires.

Not fast enough.


	3. Hotch – Coming Down

It’s a relatively uneventful hike. Prentiss, with all the bureaucratic skills of the mother who’d raised her, manages to assimilate herself in with the locals almost effortlessly. Even the sheriff relaxes slightly around her, opening up about the area. Hotch is impressed, but not overly surprised.

Of course, when things are going well, something always goes wrong.

They’re at the crime scene, examining the campsite for any sign of _why_ seven campers had just dropped off the face of the earth, when the gunshot echoes throughout the valley.

“There’s no sign of a struggle, Hotch,” Emily says quietly, peering into the tent. “It’s like they just got up and left. Without dressing, without taking their gear. They just got up and walked off into the Alaskan wilderness.”

Hotch opens his mouth to answer and that’s when the familiar crack sounds. Birds scatter, the sound hollow and ominous. Emily stills and turns to him, her mouth tight.

There’s another.

“Get your people on the radio,” Hotch orders, standing and turning on Shades. He’s staring off to the north of them, eyes narrowed, seemingly listening. “Find out which of our teams that was, if any.” The man nods slowly, and Hotch can’t read a damn thing on his face. His reactions don’t sit right, they’re not… they’re not readable. He’s having the same problem with the rest of the rangers. He just can’t profile them and it’s unsettling, especially right now.

He carefully watches the other two rangers with them as Shades radios their other teams. One of them is unconcerned, almost bored, posture loose and relaxed against the tree she’s leaning under. When she meets Hotch’s gaze, she smiles cheerfully. The other is pacing the lines of the campsite, and Hotch can see the whites of his eyes as his head flicks from shadow to shadow. Panicking.

Prentiss eases herself up, and her hand is by her hip. He steps slightly closer to her. They wait.

“Team two are fine,” Shades says suddenly, lowering the radio. Hotch almost laughs. Of course they are; what bear would take on Rossi?

“Sir,” the nervous man says, shaking his hair and licking at his lips. The sheriff waves him away without a word, ignoring the whine of fear in his voice. Hotch takes note of that.

“Want me to talk to him?” Prentiss murmurs, her voice a soft hum in his ear. He can feel her shoulder brushing his shoulder-blade. She’s angled herself so the tent is at their back, covering him. He’s sorely glad to have her there.

“No,” he says. “With me.” He feels her arm shift as she nods.

“Team three, pick up,” Shades says, and it hits Hotch that that’s the third time he’s called. The fear is instant and colder than even the frigid air around them, plunging his gut to his shoes. He doesn’t let it show. He can’t. It would be the most foolish move he could make, to show his heart to these people. But that doesn’t stop him feeling it.

_Spencer._

“Team three—” The sheriff is cut off by a string of crackly cussing issuing from the handheld. Morgan. Hotch feels Prentiss relax minutely.

“Reid’s alive,” she says, not keeping her voice down, a chuckle hidden behind the words. “Who else can piss Morgan off like that?”

“You,” Hotch says, uncharacteristically flippant in his relief.

“Yeah, it was me,” Morgan is saying, and there’s a wobble to his voice that has Hotch inwardly groaning. He just _knows_ that this conversation is going to end with _‘Reid’s been attacked/fallen down a hole/off a cliff/contracted rabies/shot himself in the foot’_. That wobble almost guarantees it. “Fucking huge wolf just came at us, outta nowhere. Knocked Reid on his ass.”

Hotch is watching the sheriff, but he feels Prentiss tense. When he follows her gaze, the nervous ranger has gone grey, staring at Shades like he’s expecting… something. Something more than what he gets.

“Was the animal hurt?” Shades asks, and now they’re all staring at him.

“The _animal_?” Prentiss splutters, stepping forward. Hotch makes a disapproving noise, and she stills, staying within arm’s reach of him. “Is the fucking _animal_ okay?”

“Uh,” Morgan says, and he sounds just as confused. “It seemed… lively? Reid’s a bit bruised though. He smacked his head pretty hard on the way down, and he’s scratched up from the fall.”

“He get bit?” Shade is ignoring Prentiss’ glare, which is commendable because it’s _fierce_.

“No? I don’t think. You thinking rabies?”

“Head back to the cabin,” Hotch says, cutting over the sheriff. “We’ll meet you there, check him out, and go out with the search teams.”

“Aye,” Shades agrees, glancing up at the low sky. “Might have snow threatening. Bring ‘em in; nature’s working against us now.” Morgan signs off, still confused, and Hotch quickly scans the campsite one last time. They have photos. They can work from those, as well as the evidence prior teams have gathered.

“Nothing natural about it,” mutters the man, pacing again with his head low. “She’s…”

“Shh,” replies the sheriff, just as quick.

Hotch meets Prentiss’ eyes, and in them he sees the danger they’re in. All of them.

 

* * *

 

They run into a search team on the way back to the cabin. The team is twelve strong, spread out in a line, and every one of them is watching the sky warily. The temperature has dropped substantially, even in the short time it’s taken to pick their way down the track, and Hotch can see the strain of time running out on every one of their faces. Prentiss sidles away, and it’s frustrating to keep one eye on her mingling with the searchers while simultaneously talking to the leader of the tired group, but he manages it.

She catches up with him as they leave, the woman ranger trailing close to them but the men falling behind, and there’s a map folded in her hand. “Search parameters,” she explains, unfolding a section. “Hotch, look at this. There’s whole sections of this area they’re avoiding. Look.”

He does. “Show Reid when we get back,” he says finally. “And don’t go anywhere alone, not even within the base camp.” She goes to answer, then looks at the woman and smiles brightly. It’s her fake smile, her ‘pleased to see you, I’m exactly what I seem’ smile. The woman doesn’t return it.

The whole way back Hotch can feel eyes burning on the back of his neck, and his hand hovers unconsciously near his weapon. He’s ready, but he’s not sure for what.

 

* * *

 

They reach the cabin as the afternoon hits with startling swiftness. Hotch suspects that this is the kind of place where afternoon is only a suggestion, flicking by straight into twilight before they’re given the chance to appreciate the brief hint of sunlight that turns the tops of the pines green-gold.

They approach the front door with a cautious kind of tension, both guarded against the men at their back and the woman at their side, even as she gives her regards and peels away to follow the path down to the base camp. With a nod, the sheriff and his ranger follow, the man looking back once, eyes still worried. The door creaks as Hotch swings it open, wooden floorboards groaning under his feet, and Reid looks up from his spot in front of the slowly crackling fire, surrounded by maps and papers and wrapped tightly in a scratchy burgundy blanket. There’s an orange smear over a dark graze on his cheek, his hair is sticking in all directions, and he grins sheepishly at them.

“Morgan made me sit,” he complains, standing with the blanket drawn tightly around his shoulders. Hotch watches him, the careful way he places his feet, like he’s unsteady, and quietly agrees. “I’m fine.”

“I’ll go find Morgan,” Prentiss says, and leaves them alone. Hotch steps into the room, saying nothing, closes the door behind them. Reid watches him, eyes intent, and the three steps it takes to bring him within arm’s reach pass in a flash.

A smile teases Reid’s lips. “You look worried,” he says, and that’s an understatement. Hotch rolls his eyes and leans in, peering at the graze. Reid smells of earth and antiseptic, and underneath that, a distinct, subtle scent that’s familiar and warm and entirely his. “I’m really fine.”

“How hard did you hit your head?” Hotch asks, reaching his hand up to brush against the back of Reid’s hair. The lump is immediately noticeable, a lock of hair resisting his fingers as though stuck together with something dry and tacky.

“Barely,” Reid lies, the evidence of his lie obvious as he winces at Hotch’s gentle touch. “Wolf messed up two of my coats, though. Tore straight through them.” The blanket shifts on his shoulders as he points, then looks regretful.

Hotch can see why. Reid’s trying to downplay the whole thing, but when he turns to see the coats, the cold returns to his belly and settles in to stay. The shoulders of them both are shredded, torn through, and it’s only too easy to imagine the damage jaws like that could have done to flesh. They’re splattered with blood, and Hotch knows he’s staring, but he can’t look away.

“It’s not mine,” Reid says, referring to the blood, but the cold doesn’t change because _it could have been_. “Morgan shot the wolf while it was on top of me. Seriously, Aaron, look at me. Please?” Hotch does so, because Reid so rarely uses his first name, and tries to hide his worry. He fails.

Reid sighs, settled back on his heels, and the blanket shifts again.

“There’s blood on your shirt,” Hotch says, reaching for something to say, and Reid looks down, startled.

“No there’s not,” he says, dropping the blanket to look. His mouth falls open into a soft _O_ of surprise. “I didn’t realise it had soaked… oh.”

Hotch hisses as Reid tugs the collar of his shirt down to reveal two shallow gashes on the pale skin of his shoulder. They’re bleeding, sluggishly but steadily, the skin around them a flaky rust-red and raw looking. “Thought you said you weren’t hurt,” he scolds, turning to go to the kitchen and retrieve the first aid kit.

“I wasn’t,” Reid says, his voice low. “I mean, I didn’t even feel it.” He smiles crookedly, dropping his stained shirt to hang loosely off his frame, hiding the bite under material turned dark brown. “Next time, can we go somewhere sunnier?” he jokes weakly. “Without wolves preferably…”

When Hotch glances at him, he’s framed against the window, lit on one side by the glow of the fire, and outside he can see white beginning to fall. He looks okay.

He holds that memory.

“I’ll see if Australia requires our services,” he quips softly, and Reid’s laugh follows him out.

 

* * *

 

The day ends with them no closer to the missing campers, and Hotch retires for the night to the room he’s sharing with Reid, struggling with a certainty that they’re out of time before they’ve even begun. Outside, snow presses against the windows and doors and promises bodies instead of souls to be found in the woods that surrounds them. He closes the thick curtains on the night and turns away, his eyes tracing the shivering bundle of blankets on the single bed opposite his, hiding Reid from his view. Concern bites at his brain. Reid had barely contributed to the stifled discussion the team had had upon reuniting as dusk had fallen and made it too dangerous to continue the search. His mouth had twitched into the vaguest hint of a smile at Rossi’s sly jokes about being ‘too bony even for a dog to eat.’ He hadn’t said a word at supper. He’d slowly drooped further as the night had ticked on, his eyes heavy lidded and demeanour flat, eventually quietly saying goodnight and vanishing a good three hours before the rest of them had even considered putting down work for the night.

It was entirely unlike him.

Now, with the clock ticking on midnight, he’s still awake and by the looks of it, freezing.

“Alright, Spencer?” Hotch says quietly after he’s changed, locked the door, and dimmed the lights to a soft glow. He won’t turn them off. Reid doesn’t like the dark, and Hotch isn’t feeling too fond of it at the moment either. Reid doesn’t answer, just lies so painfully still Hotch can almost hear the sheets focusing on not rustling under him.

He can’t sleep. Outside, there’s a muffled howl. The silence is oppressive.

Reid coughs. Once. Twice. Hotch’s throat itches in sympathy as the cough turns miserable and dry. The covers whisper over and over as the other inhabitant of the room tosses underneath them. There’s silence for a few minutes until there’s a very muffled moan from the other bed; the kind of noise that slips out unconsciously when hurt or scared or just exhausted beyond measure. Hotch doesn’t even think before reacting. He’s a father, and he was once a husband. That’s the kind of moan that any parent responds to instantly, because it usually precludes a miserable toddler throwing up on the carpet. He slips out of his bed and pads over silently to the other single, pulling the covers back from where Reid’s tugged them over his head.

He’s curled into himself, knees to his chest, and he turns his head to blink blearily up at Hotch. The yellow glow of the light makes him look sallow with dark points of colour high on each cheek and turns the graze on his face into a shapeless dark form that he reaches out and brushes his fingers over.

They come away clammy.

“You’re sick,” he says unnecessarily. _Shit._

“Just cold,” Reid says, his voice painfully hoarse, and he reaches up to rub at his neck. His fingers catch on the mess he’s made of the bandage while he’s been fidgeting. There are spots of black on the sheets. Hotch sighs and slides a hand under his back, inching him over carefully, heat radiating into his palm. Reid lets himself be guided. There’s room in the bed for two, barely, and Reid doesn’t object, even though this is horribly unprofessional and nothing like what either of them would usually do.

The other man rolls over, pressing his face against Hotch’s shirt, and clings to him like he’s trying to leech all the heat from Hotch’s skin. It’s like holding a fire close, and Hotch’s arms tingle uncomfortably as he tugs the blanket back over them both, and leans his mouth against Reid’s hair. He’s a familiar shape, one Hotch has learnt how to hold over the past three months of their shy and tentative courtship, but it’s unfamiliar in how needy it feels. Never of them are clingy, they don’t generally cuddle, they like their space, but on this night Reid falls into a fitful, broken sleep in his arms and Hotch lies awake and thinks of home.


	4. Reid – Falling Away From Me

Reid wakes up and, for the first time since arriving in Tongass, he’s not cold. That’s interesting for all of about ten seconds as his brain slowly kicks into gear. Then, his brain wakes up and something else, much more interesting, becomes apparent.

He’s pressed against Aaron’s back, the man still snoozing and practically hanging off the bed, he’s the opposite of cold, and Aaron smells really fucking good. Not just good. Reid presses his nose to the base of the dark hairline in front of him and he can smell _everything_. It’s a heady mix of everything that makes a human, soaps and oils and sweat and bacteria, and he can’t think for trying to sort through the rush of information.

It’s intoxicating.

Aaron hums softly, rolling back slightly into him, and Reid also realizes that he’s painfully aroused and the evidence of this is firmly against his boss’s thigh. Which should be horrifying. Really. Mortifying. In any other world, it would be, because they hadn’t reached this yet. Not from lack of wanting to or lack of experience on either side, just… there was far too much at stake to rush.

“Aaron,” Reid says, and his voice is low with sleep and husky. He clears his throat and tries again, ignoring the sudden surge of heat down his body to his belly and his crotch as his body registers the arousal and decides to act upon it. _“Aaron.”_

Aaron just mumbles something and keeps sleeping. Reid presses his mouth against the back of the man’s neck and mouths at the skin, tasting. He digs his toes into the bed, shifts uncomfortably. His arm is trapped under Aaron’s side; he can’t escape even if he wanted to.

He doesn’t particularly want to.

He tastes the skin bare to him again. Aaron tastes like… well, exactly what Reid expected him to taste like. He tastes like Aaron. He tastes _delicious_. Reid closes his eyes and bites at his lip, the arousal now a steady drum beat that’s thudding through his entire body, his hips twitching minutely along with it.

“Aaron,” he tries again, sitting up slightly and looking, just looking, and has the man always looked this… all of this. Long, lean lines under his imminently sensible shirt and slacks, both clothing items worn thin enough that they cling to the shape of his body. Reid tugs the covers down, earning a grumble from the other man, one that he ignores because it reveals his stomach and his legs and the ever-so-slight suggestion of his cock in his pants, and _what the hell is wrong with me?_

Reid’s staring, he realizes, staring at the way the grey material lies over that junction between Aaron’s thighs, and some distant part of him notes that there’s a growing wet patch on his own slacks, which is ridiculous because he hasn’t done _anything_ to warrant pre- _anything_ and he hasn’t been this turned on since he was in college. He licks his lips; are they dry? He’s not sure. His shoulder itches. He shifts and lays back down, trying to regain control of his mind. This is ridiculous. He has pins and needles in the arm that’s being held hostage by his bed-mate, Aaron’s going to wake up any minute now, and he doesn’t really want to explain why he’s rubbing against him like a cat…

He’ll just. Deal with it. Or something. He slips a hand down his own body, almost whining as his fingers brush against his own stupidly—seriously, what the _hell_ is going on—firm cock.

“Aaron,” he says again, but this time it’s almost a moan, and he slips his hand in his slacks and rocks into his own fist, closing his eyes and it’s not quiet, he’s supposed to be quiet, but that seems to be slightly beyond him at the moment.

“Spencer?”

His eyes snap open, feeling his cock twitch in his palm with interest. His arm is suddenly free and he almost scoots back but that would take him away from Aaron with his scents and his taste and he doesn’t want that, not really.

His shoulder hurts.

Aaron rolls over and blinks at him with eyes still hazy from sleep, and Reid almost head-butts his chin in his haste to kiss him, mouth slipping as Aaron’s opens in shock, teeth clacking together and catching his lip as he pulls away. Reid tries to say his name, or maybe apologise, but he’s lost his words and instead he just slips his hand free of his own pants and slides them into Aaron’s shirt, finding skin, bare skin and he _wants._

“What are you _oh_ ,” Aaron breathes, and Reid is on him now, straddling him almost and their hips are pressed together so there’s absolutely no way he doesn’t know what Reid’s doing, to be honest. There’s a warm hand on his hip steadying him, friction as they move together, and he knows that Aaron is interested now because he _can smell it jesus fuck._ He opens his mouth and he can taste the other man’s arousal, the sharp tang his sweat takes as his body is flooded with hormones and chemicals preparing him for…

_Preparing him for what_? Reid thinks hazily, but it doesn’t matter because they’re kissing again, Reid’s shirt is off and there’s skin, not enough skin, and their pants follow despite Aaron’s soft noise of surprise when Reid tugs impatiently at his waistband. They’re bare, and Reid’s staring again as Aaron’s cock springs free, and there’s a hint of dampness on the tip that makes Reid’s mouth water and his brain _wait, what? Slow down._

Lips again, hot breath against his skin and Reid whines into the other man’s mouth, rocking his hips so they slide against each other, once, twice, and he shudders suddenly feeling the heat that’s starting at his shoulder and radiating down suddenly become a pulsing need and he’s _ohgodAaronAaron._

Aaron makes a startled noise, glancing down as Reid stiffens in his arms, coming, making a goddamn mess on his leg, and when he’s done he’s… “Are you still…?” He reaches down, his fingers brushing Reid’s still-hard dick, and Reid tries to squirm away and lean into the touch at the same time. Now, he looks worried and the dark arousal in his eyes is fading, replaced with concern, and Reid doesn’t want that because for a moment when he was teetering on the edge, he’d felt _something_ that’s more than this and exactly what he’s looking for, but it was gone before he could grab at it.

_He’ll stop this if he gets worried_ , Reid thinks, and there’s a miserable part of him that almost wants that, so instead he wriggles out of Aaron’s tight grip and slips down his body, finding the smooth-warm head of Aaron’s cock and wrapping his mouth around it almost hungrily, feeling the length stiffen once more from where it had softened at the moment of brief anxiety. Down here the scent is stronger, especially when Aaron chokes back a strangled gasp and almost bucks into his mouth, catching himself in time. It’s musky and earthy and human all at once, and Reid wonders why he’s never noticed it before. He can smell himself as well, his fingers trailing through the sticky mess he’s left on Aaron’s leg, and that smells… different. Not like Aaron’s does. He should be concerned at that maybe, but he doesn’t remember how to be.

“Spencer, Christ, yes,” Aaron says, almost a moan, mostly a gasp, and Reid runs his tongue along the bottom of the silky cock he’s taking, drawing his mouth along it slowly and releasing it with a flick of his tongue along the spit-shiny head. Aaron hisses, cards shaking fingers through his hair, and Reid’s still hard, he still wants, but he’s suddenly worried what he wants isn’t here. He presses his nose against the warm wonderful skin of Aaron’s thigh, feeling his cock brushing against his ear and the soft whisper of curls against his cheek. If he makes a noise, it’s muffled by the steady beat of the pulse under his jaw.

He should probably do something, anything other than kneeling here, his face in his boyfriend’s crotch and with one hand in the sticky trails of come and the other rubbing against himself trying to find the edge he so desperately wants to throw himself over. A hand tugs on his shoulder and it jars the _bite wait, ow, oh god that’s actually fucking turning me on_ , pulling him up all the way, until his mouth is bumping against Aaron’s and there’s something frighteningly like affection in the other man’s eyes, which isn’t what this is about at all. “Come on,” he murmurs, pulling Reid into his arms. “Come here.”

“I need to come,” Reid says finally, an admission, and Aaron looks like he’s torn between laughing or nodding. “Aaron, Aaron, please. Just, anything, _please_.” He settles for nodding, sitting upright with Reid half on his lap and half off, both of them sweaty and sticky and entirely too gross for this time of the morning.

“With me,” Aaron says, voice deep and husky, the voice of the well-fucked, and his slides his own hand around himself and _fuck_. Reid watches hungrily as he teases himself, eyes partly closed, close enough to where Reid had left him that Reid can almost feel his climax building. “Spence, _with me.”_ There’s a hungry hum to that last statement, and Reid nods, watching Aaron’s hand moving, stroking, doing the same, ignoring his own burning body to focus on that and _ah_.

It’s there for a flash as his mind goes blank and he spills, barely a trickle this time, into his palm. He reaches _reachesreaches_ and there are brown eyes watching him somewhere, calling him, and his body lurches uncomfortably, almost painfully, but then it’s gone and he can smell Aaron’s come and his sweat and the scent of their bodies mingled together, and he sags, spent.

“Jesus,” Aaron says, the word rumbling through Reid’s body as he leans against the other man, finally softening, and shivers slightly in the pre-dawn air. “What was that?”

Reid shrugs slowly, his cognitive functions returning. He blinks, rubs at his shoulder with the cleanest part of his hand, the side, tentatively. “Keeping warm?” he jokes weakly, and this time when he brushes his lips against Aaron’s, he doesn’t smell anything out of the ordinary. He tries to recall the mad _need_ of the past… he doesn’t know how long. He blinks again and it’s gone. Aaron’s still looking at him strangely and the sheets are a _mess_.

“Ew,” he says, scooting away from the mess and pulling a face. “What’s wrong?”

Aaron stares at him. Why? “Nothing,” he says finally, slowly, and Reid smiles.

He feels fine.

 

* * *

 

The normality lasts until just after breakfast. He’s fine in the shower as he washes Aaron’s scent from his skin. He’s fine when Emily comes down to breakfast, already carrying a file in other hand and a glass of orange juice in the other. When she smiles at him, he smiles back. The juice smells almost unpleasant, bitingly citric, despite her sitting up the other end of the table from him. He’s fine even when he realizes he’s been staring at Aaron over the dining room table, listening to the slow drumbeat of his heart despite the distance between them.

He’s fine.

Aaron watches him just as closely, and he’s fine until he’s not.

The burning starts again when he steps outside, the cold air slamming into him like a knife, but this time it doesn’t feel disagreeable. It’s almost welcoming. His head spins at the juxtaposition of the icy-hot wind with the heat under his skin, and he stumbles. Someone catches his arm and he’s on fire again just from that touch. When his head clears, Emily is against the wall and his hand is gripping her arm so tightly he can feel the bones of her wrist shifting between his fingers.

Despite this he doesn’t let go, not right away, because she smells _scared_ and it sends a jolt of horror/misery/want through him that he doesn’t quite understand. He stares at her and she stares back and he wonders if she tastes like Aaron does.

“Spencer,” she says, very slowly, and she enunciates each word carefully. “You’re hurting me.”

He lets go. He blinks, tries to focus, gets lost in the patter of her heartbeat as it races, frightened, rightfully so. He can smell earth and humans and wood, smoke, metal, guns, guns…

“What?” he says, because suddenly Emily is Aaron and he’s crowding him, too close, not close enough, and just like that he knows he’s hard again and one slip-up away from pressing himself against the other man right here on the porch. Aaron talks again, and he’s doing the same thing, the Emily thing, talking slowly. Like Reid’s stupid. He feels stupid. His mind is sluggish. He tries to think of reasons why, but his brain chokes and stumbles, hyper-focusing instead on the flicker of a pulse at Aaron’s throat.

“Come on,” Aaron says soothingly, and his voice is nice like this, warm and smooth. Reid wants to purr and press against him, to hear that voice rumble through his body. He thinks he might be smiling, he’s not sure, his face doesn’t feel entirely his own anymore. His shoulder itches over the burning and he scratches at it. “Come inside.”

_“Come here.”_

He blinks. That wasn’t Aaron. “Pardon?” he says again, sitting upright from his place on the couch. Emily jumps and spins, staring at him, and her complexion is ghastly. She’s pale and scared. “Did you say something?”

“Spencer, what the fuck?” she hisses, crouching in front of him. This close she smells like sebaceous oils and cotton and various chemicals from her perfumes, lotions, shampoos. He could probably name each of them if he tried. He starts to. She grabs his arm, shaking it gently. “No, don’t do that. Don’t drift off again. Hotch and Rossi have gone to try and get someone to take us down to the hospital. You need to stay with us.”

“I’m fine,” he says, because he is, really. This is nice. He’s warm and she smells lovely and familiar and he’s not burning so much anymore.

_“Get rid of her.”_

Okay. That’s not so fine. He’s looking right at Emily, and she definitely didn’t say that.

“I’m hearing voices,” he says, dead serious, and he didn’t think she could get any paler, but she does. She’s hurting his arm now with her grip. He probably deserves that. They’ll have matching bruises. He breathes in deeply through his mouth as his nerves begin to jangle, scatter, setting his brain buzzing. “Your pulse is too fast, Em. I can hear it racing. You should probably sit down.”

“Oh my god, Spence,” JJ says from behind them, her voice sharp and scared, and he doesn’t know why really, because he’s fine, isn’t he?

Emily stares at him for a long, frozen moment and he smiles. That feels right.

The burning creeps up again.

She hugs him close and she’s shaking. But that can’t be right because Emily is never scared, not really, not properly. Not like him. He notes dully that he’s hard again and closes his eyes, hunching into himself and fighting back the soft voice that wonders if she’d let him fuck her.

 

* * *

 

He can hear his team, despite the fact that he knows they’re in the living room with the door closed, and he’s curled up on the bathroom tiles in his own room, upstairs, with his ear to the ground. He’s supposed to be in bed, but it smells like him and Aaron together and makes his gut ache. He’s not trying to listen. They’re just very loud.

_“There was a quick thaw this morning. The road’s washed out. They won’t send an ambulance up, and we won’t be able to get the SUVs down.”_

_“Well, get them to send a rescue chopper! He’s not okay, Hotch. You didn’t see him while you guys were gone. I think he’s having absence seizures; he just kept completely spacing out and rambling when he came back. When he hit his head…”_

_“They’re working on it. Garcia’s trying to push it through. The closest air rescue pilot won’t come up with the low fog coming in. He’s concerned about landing.”_

_“Spence could die.”_

_“He won’t.”_

“I’m okay,” Reid mumbles into the tiles. They’re nice and cool and he’s taken his shirt off at some point to try and press his chest against them. It’s hot now. He doesn’t like the heat. “Don’t worry about me.”

_“Look, we’ve got a couple of the rangers agree to hike down there with us. We’ll drag the doctor back by his ears if we have to.”_

_“What did Shades have to say about that?”_

_“Nothing. We didn’t tell him why. Told him it was case related. I don’t want him knowing Reid is…”_

_“They’re going to suspect if we stay holed up here while you guys go for a stroll down the fucking mountain.”_

_“So don’t.”_

_“What?”_

_“We don’t stay holed up. Hotch, I’ll go with Rossi down to the town. I used to go hiking with my dad all the time. I’m better at it than any of you. Morgan, you and Hotch go out with the search parties. They’ll have no reason to come here if you’re with them. Emily, stay with Spence. You guys will be back before dusk; we’ll reach town just after. We’ll be back just after noon tomorrow with a doctor.”_

Silence. Reid feels something uneasy settle in his stomach. He’s suddenly cold, a flash of it that has him sitting upright. _No_. He can’t let them do this, they can’t split up, they have to stay together.

He tries to stand and falls.

Dizzy.

He whines.

_“I don’t like it.”_

_“Do we have a choice? I think one of them is the unsub, Hotch. Maybe more. You’re all thinking it. They know something they’re not telling us. And there’s more of them than there are of us. If we stay here, there’s no guarantee they won’t… if Spence even lasts until the thaw is over.”_

_“Come on man, you can’t be considering this. We’re not leaving Prentiss here with Reid. If they take her out, what’s he going to do? He’s helpless. We’d be basically leaving her alone. Let me stay.”_

_“No. They underestimate me. They’re not going to try anything with you and Hotch up there…”_

The voices go on and on and on and on and Reid gets lost in them. He closes his eyes and dreams of brown eyes and a wild scent that hovers over him and calls him home.


	5. Rossi – Night Vision

JJ organizes their gear and he’s really too damn old to be going on a mad hike down a goddamn Alaskan mountain in weather barely above freezing, but he’s also long ago come to terms with the fact that there isn’t much he won’t do for his team. Apparently, freezing to death is one of the things he’ll gladly do. Well, not gladly.

But he’ll do it.

He watches the way JJ packs their gear—with a single-minded intensity that shows just how frightened she actually is—and then he slips upstairs. He’s going to act calm and optimistic about this crazy last resort idea, but, in reality, he’s not either of those things. Anything could happen. Anything might. They’re behind enemy lines with time and nature working against them. And even if, somehow, everything goes fine and they reach the town and the doctor has some kind of magical transportation device from one of those stupid movies Reid loves so much…

Rossi pauses with his hand on the door to Hotch and Reid’s room and breathes in slowly. Inhale. Exhale. Calm. You were a soldier. _You can do this._ _They’re depending on you to do this._

But just in case, because David Rossi has a lot of regrets weighing him down and he needs to be as light as possible for this, he’s going to do this, even if it feels almost fatalistic. He pushes the door open and there’s the murmur of a deep voice within. It’s a familiar voice, but an unfamiliar tone. Rossi pauses a few steps in. Aaron is on the bathroom floor with the kid slumped bonelessly against him, and he’s talking to him in the soft kind of voice that you use when…

He wonders how he’d managed to miss that his friend is in love, and his heart twists. Way to up the odds, Aaron. Good work. Now we have so much fucking more to lose. If there’s one thing Rossi has learned, it’s that death doesn’t give a shit how much you love someone. It just makes it likelier he’ll take them. He doesn’t tell them this. “We’re almost ready,” he says instead, and Aaron twitches and looks up at him, his face carefully blank. “You gotta head off soon, too, or we’re going to have Shades up here looking for us.”

Aaron stares at him and Reid’s not moving, he’s not fucking moving, he’s just sitting there with his eyes half closed and cheeks the painful kind of glowing. “What if he’s not…” Aaron begins, and trails off. His arm tightens, pulling the kid closer.

“He will be,” Rossi promises and it’s not a lie, not really, but it’s not the truth, because how could any of them have known how this would end?

 

* * *

 

Morning flashes by and it’s entirely composed of Rossi staring at the ground in front of him, at the steady flash of JJ’s boots flickering in and out of his vision in a determined drumbeat. He can’t look up because the ground is treacherous. It fights them with every step and if he looks away it slides out from under his boots and threatens to send him skidding helplessly off the path. They keep each other close and their guns closer.

It’s cold, but in a way that feels almost warm, and Rossi would be glad for that except it means that the snow that had muffled the world the night before is turning to slush that turns to water that runs in rivets on the rocks and freezes into invisible pools that lie in wait to rip his feet out from under him. Birds call around them; JJ breathes steadily and easily with her gaze fixed forward; the world has narrowed to the sound of trees shifting, their bags rustling, water flowing, and the occasional call of an animal in the woods around them.

Afternoon. He aches in his muscles and it’s the good kind of ache that means he’s still okay, he can keep up, and he knows dusk is coming just as quickly and will bring with it the snapping cold that will shift the ache to his bones. That will slow him down. Both of them, because JJ won’t leave him, and he catches himself wishing he’d let Morgan come. His goddamn pride wouldn’t let him admit maybe this wasn’t the best idea, and now the kid’s life depends on him being right.

They don’t talk. At first there’s nothing to say, and when there is something to say neither of them have the breath to spare. They hear gunshots and falter but there’s no going back.

Dusk. The slope evens out. JJ slips once but before he can ask her if she’s okay, she’s up again, brushing off her hip, and twice as determined.

It gets cold. It gets dark. He wonders how the others are. He wonders if they still number six.

There’s a flicker of light ahead. Yellow, harsh, manmade.

“Thank fuck,” JJ says, and breaks into a run.

He follows.

 

* * *

 

The town is silent even as they run down the icy, unsealed road. Rossi is stunned he still has the energy to run, but he’s been revitalized by the sight of houses and cars and life; the promise of an end to this. JJ pulls her phone out, the phone that has until now been useless, and glances down at it.

“I’ll call Garcia on mine,” Rossi says, because she’s pulling up a map of the town and glancing about for the medical help they’re there for, but they still have the case. They might save Reid, he’s almost certain they will now that they’ve made it, but there’s still seven other people out there that need them. Until Rossi has proof that they’re no longer breathing, he’s not giving up on them.

He wants to call Hotch, but he also knows that if he does that and doesn’t get an answer, it’s going to shatter him.

“Sir!” says the panicked voice in his ear. “Oh my god, are you okay? Reid! Is Reid okay? I’ve been trying everyone and no one is answering and I got Morgan before but he cut out and he sounded okay but scared and I’m all the way over here and—”

“How did you go with the med-evac?” he says, because the line is whistling ominously and he’s pretty sure it’s about to drop out on them both.

“No luck. Pilot still nixing the flight. He says there’s a big blow-up behind the warm front. Sir, I—”

“Anything on the case we need to know?” He keeps his voice brusque. There’s no time for pleasantries, not right now. They need every drop of information they can get. In front of him, JJ is dialling, dialling, dialling, and every time she lowers the phone, her face goes harsher in the yellow light of the streetlights. Around them, the world is hushed. He doesn’t look up; he knows there’s no sign of stars or the moon behind the clouds rolling in. Standing on this road in the yellow streetlight with his breath puffing out in front of him and the sky closing in… it’s a feeling very much like being swallowed.

There’s a sucking breath that almost screams at him through the broken connection. “Our hikers are into some seriously ooky stuff,” she says finally. “Witchcraft, the occult, end of the world type deals. If it goes bump in the night, it bumps in their search histories. But they’re all good kids, mostly okay homes, grades… much-not a thing—wolf…”

“Wait, what was that?” he asks, almost barking, but the line beeps and drops out. “Fuck!”

“No answer from anyone at the cabin,” JJ says quietly. “Hospital is three streets over. Ready to go?” He nods and turns his back on the mountain and the oncoming storm.

He turns his back on his team, just for now.

 

* * *

 

The doors slide open and JJ is calling out before Rossi even has a chance to step into the—after being outside—garishly bright foyer of the hospital. It’s empty except for a bank of plastic chairs, a sad looking plastic fern, and a startled nurse half on her feet behind a counter.

“We need your on-call doctor,” JJ says, pulling out her creds and flashing them. Rossi does the same, their feet leaving muddy trails as the ice and muck melts in the heated room. “Please. We need to hurry.”

The nurse’s eyes widen and she nods, vanishing into a swinging door. The room is silent, painfully silent, and Rossi focuses on the low hum of the heating and tries to breathe evenly. “Come on,” he mutters, the minutes _draggin_ g _._ “Come on, come on.”

“We can’t hike back up there until the morning,” JJ replies, with a glance at the door that suggests she would if she could, and might possibly try anyway, and Rossi shoves back a rush of anxious energy that agrees with her eagerness. “Dave, do we…”

The door swings open and a man in the ugliest Christmas jumper Rossi has ever seen strides out. Rossi instantly dislikes him purely for the ridiculous stitched smile of the gaudy reindeer on his breast. “Present from my son,” the man says with an easy smile, holding his hand out for them to shake. “Doctor Shaffer. How can I help you?” His eyes are flicking up and down, lingering on their boots and gear. His eyebrows raise.

Rossi lets JJ talk. If need be, he’ll steamroll the guy into helping them, but he’d rather they get there with her version of sweetly firm first. “Our colleague is badly hurt,” she’s saying, and Rossi takes the chance to watch the guy carefully. Who knows how deep the weirdness of this place runs? “We’re in the Bracken Lodge—”

“Part of the search teams?” Shaffer asks, eyes widening. “There are no roads open up there at the moment. How did you get here?” He looks again at their boots. “That’s a six-hour hike!”

“Yeah, which is why we’re not in any mood for small-talk,” Rossi snaps, and oops, shit, he was trying to be nice. He smiles weakly and tries not to think of the empty stare Reid had given them over the breakfast table and the way he’d slowly but determinedly slipped away. “We can’t get him down here, so we need someone up there with him.”

Shaffer looks uncertain, glancing back at the silent nurse. “What happened to him?” he asks finally.

“Hit his head—” Rossi begins.

JJ closes her eyes for a moment. “He was attacked by a wolf,” she cuts in, and she’s watching them both with a cool look that means she’s taking them apart just as efficiently as any of their team of trained profilers would. The nurse makes a soft _oh_ of horror and the doctor sighs, confirming every one of their suspicions that they are in way over their fucking heads. Rabies stats begin to dance in the back of Rossi’s mind and pushing them away just makes them dance harder. _Shit, shit shit shitshit._

“Call Daniel and get in Doctor Ashen to take over from me ASAP,” Shaffer says to the nurse, his mouth thinning into a grim line that’s sorely at odds with the giggling reindeer on his front. “I’m going to get a kit together and change.”

“You can’t hike up there at night,” the nurse replies, covering her mouth with her hand. “Ken, it’s below freezing. The path is iced up. He’ll keep till morning. Where is your friend now, agents?”

“With our teammates,” JJ replies after a quick glance at Rossi. “He has a fever. He’s not responding to any external stimuli. His behaviour…”

“Is going to be odd for a few days,” the doctor says, taking a few steps towards the door. “The contact between him and the wolf was brief? He returned immediately to the Lodge?” JJ nods yes to both. “I can give him something to reduce the discomfort. I’m more concerned about the head wound, and he shouldn’t be failing to respond to you. That’s far more worrisome.” He’s looking at the nurse when he speaks next. “The fever will need managing as well. It’s our responsibility, Clare.”

She makes an unhappy noise and turns on her heel, striding to the phone. “There’s a lounge down the hall,” she calls to them, picking the handset out of the cradle and pausing. “Coffee in the pot, and soup in the fridge you can nuke. Warm yourselves up until the doctor is ready.”

JJ looks at him, her blue eyes worried. “Can you make it back?” she asks quietly. “If we leave tonight? They know the road. It’s safer in a group.”

He’s not staying behind, that’s for sure. She’s _not_ going alone with strangers. “Yep,” he says firmly, and moves towards the lounge, making sure to focus on the coffee and not the myriad of weirdness surrounding them.

It’s going to be a long night.

 

* * *

 

Daniel turns out to be the doctor’s son, and he’s a cheerful, broad lad about Reid’s age. Rossi, despite his determination to dislike a man who would buy his parent a sweater so goddamn _awful_ , likes him immediately. Which is odd, because there’s been few people he’s liked since he stepped off the float plane and into this pine-scented hellhole. JJ doesn’t. She smiles at him with a smile that’s a touch too warm to be real, and her eyes are ice. He doesn’t seem to notice.

“Ready?” the doctor asks them, his reindeer now obscured by a coat made of a rough material that sticks stiffly down his body and reminds Rossi of being in the army, the straps of his pack pulling the coat tight against his shoulders.

“God yes,” Rossi says, and he’s not lying, because there’s six hours between him and knowing just what the hell is happening up on the ridge, and that’s going _downhill_. They’re disconnected from their team by distance and trees and the promise of snow, and it’s unbearable.

“Tom is coming,” Daniel says once to his father, which is an odd statement, because they then start off without waiting. JJ looks around, narrows her eyes, and says nothing. Rossi follows her lead, but the hair on the back of his neck prickles.

Leaving the hospital feels irreversible. They walk into the night together, numbering four, and Rossi has never felt less safe.

 

* * *

 

When it happens, it happens in a heartbeat. Daniel cracks jokes that his father relays back to him in an easy manner that suggests they do this often. Rossi watches them and he can see Aaron and Jack in their closeness, the suggestion of what they’ll be when Jack is grown. The path is more ice than slush now and the going is slow and tedious. Rossi is watching his footing and watching JJ and watching the men with them, which is probably why he didn’t have an ear to spare for their surroundings.

There’s a squealing yowl from the right, and Daniel spins, his face twisting in shock, shouts, _“Tom!”_ JJ and Rossi have their guns up seconds before the wolf bounds out of the trees, shapeless in the dark, and leaps at the young man.

“Don’t!” Shaffer yells at them, stepping between them and the wolf. The wolf limps, whines, and there’s blood glinting black on the ground under him. Daniel crouches and hisses, looking up and into the trees. “He hurt bad, Dan?”

“Dad,” Daniel says instead, his gaze fixed and hands on the wolf like he’s a fucking Labrador, and when Rossi looks away from the odd sight, they’re surrounded.

“Oh my god,” JJ says, and Rossi can’t help but agree with that sentiment because it’s impossible to count the constantly shifting wolves melding in and out of the shadows, but there’s a fuckton.

More than they have bullets, anyway.

Shaffer steps forward and Rossi almost grabs him to try and haul him back before he gets dragged into that ring of fur and eyes and fangs, but he doesn’t seem worried. “Charlotte,” he calls into the darkness, ignoring the visible wolves. JJ and Rossi exchange a glance, both of them clearly on the level of _we’re trapped in the forest with Dr. Crazy_. “What the hell are you doing? They’re feds! This isn’t how we do things here!”

The wolves stop. The doctor’s flashlight jumps from one to the other. JJ’s does the same. Rossi keeps his in front of him and tries to fight the urge to whirl in place to see if there’s one creeping up behind him. Instead, he eases around slowly, forming a kind of wedge with JJ at his side and Daniel and the injured wolf at his back. When he looks over his shoulder, there are two wolves there watching him impassively. He aims his torch at their eyes to see them flinch, and neither so much as twitches. Some small part of his mind points out that if it comes down to it, they’re probably the smallest two in the group, so if they need to book it out of there… well, maybe they’ll have a better chance of getting past them than the fucking monster sized ones in front. They’re still far bigger than any wolf has any right to be, and the hazel-eyed regard of the bigger of the two is unnervingly intelligent, almost like the beast knows exactly what he’s thinking.

“Thank you,” the doctor says, his tone _pissed_. “What the hell are you doing here? This isn’t your land. If you want to be an animal, you do it away from us—”

The wolves surge in at once and Rossi barely has time to get his gun up before they’re on them. The doctor shouts, kicking out, screams something that almost sounds like _don’t shoot them_ , and vanishes from sight as a bridled monster tries to drag Rossi down into the writhing mass of teeth by the strap of his pack. Rossi shoots it twice in the chest, lets his pack drop to the ground, and stumbles back out of reach. JJ is still upright, a bristling wolf with shaggy grey hair standing in front of her and snarling at the others almost… protectively?

Uselessly.

The wolves only hesitate a moment, and then they drag the grey wolf down, biting, snapping. Daniel screams, the doctor is nowhere to be seen, and JJ isn’t moving. “Run!” Rossi roars at her because her eyes are bugging open like she’s seen a ghost or—

Daniel leaps to his feet and then back down again and where he was standing there’s a broad-shouldered wolf and _that’s impossible what the fuck, Dave._ He takes another two steps back, but no further because he needs to get JJ and they need to get the hell outta here, but he’s pretty sure he just saw a man turn into a wolf, which means he’s probably actually…

Insane, for one thing.

The wolves turn and one grabs JJ’s leg. She goes down with a scream before shooting it in the head in a burst of brain and bone echoed in the shriek that runs like a wave through the other wolves. Rossi doesn’t think. He lunges, grabs an armful of coat and shoulder and probably hair, and drags her upright, not even waiting for her to find her feet before turning and sprinting for the forest. The smallest wolf is in front of them. It bares its teeth uncertainly, and Rossi aims his weapon and fires. Something flashes past, a blur of tan fur, knocking the smaller wolf out of the way, and Rossi hurtles the both of them and pelts into the trees, JJ trailing behind him like a kite.

They’re holding hands until they’re not. She’s behind him until she isn’t. He keeps running until his foot hits a patch of ice and goes skidding. He hits the edge of the ridge on his side and barely manages to cover his head before the ground drops out from under him.

All he hears is howling.


	6. Emily – My Beloved Monster

The others linger after Rossi and JJ have vanished down the wobbly track that will, hopefully, lead them to whatever excuse for civilisation this hellhole can offer. No one seems to want to leave. Morgan sticks so close to her she can practically count the pores on his skin, and Hotch alternates between pacing the room above them where Reid is curled up insensible on the bed and pacing on the stairs with her eyes on her.

He's shit scared and that terrifies her.

“You guys have to go,” she tells Morgan when she can’t stand him being up her ass anymore, and he nods and undecidedly walks towards their gear. She takes the opportunity to glance at her wrist, tugging her sleeve back to examine the dark splotches of bruising painted across her skin. More than anything, that speaks to how fucked they are. Reid would never, _never_ , hurt her. She knows him. He’d rather kneecap himself than hurt anyone, _especially_ a woman. Old fashioned chivalrous, that’s him in a nutshell. But that hadn’t stopped him before. He’d shoved her against the wall, his grip crushing, and the look in his eyes had been hungry.

The look in his eyes had been just like Doyle had used to look at her, and it was both horrifying and oddly… Christ, she’d never admit it, but there was a part of her that had _liked_ that look on his face. The rest of her would very much like never to see it again, thank you very much.

“Emily.” Hotch is in front of her, eyes twitchy, and he’s wearing his gear. They’re going. She thinks of seventeen different things she needs to tell him, and says none of them, because she knows each and every one is just a way to stall the moment when she’s left here alone. This place is making cowards of them all.

“Be careful, okay?” she says instead, and brushes her fingers against her weapon like a suggestion. A reminder that in this place, shoot first. She plans to, if it comes down to it. “I’ll go up and tell Reid incorrect statistics until he’s so frustrated he has to get better just to correct me.”

Morgan laughs and the sound is high and forced. On his way out, he pauses like he’s thinking of hugging her. She doesn’t let him. That’s far too much like saying goodbye.

The door closes behind them and it feels final.

 

* * *

 

She’s studying the profile in the warmth of the kitchen when the door grates open and Reid slips in, looking pale and flushed all at once. He narrows his eyes against the fluorescent light even as she makes a scolding _click_ with her tongue and catches his arm. “You’re supposed to be in bed,” she tells him, and he leans against her heavily. She almost staggers under the sudden weight. For someone who’s all bones and ridiculous hair, he’s far heavier than she expected. She’s never going to get him back up the stairs, not without dragging his ass. And that’s probably not going to help his head injury. He slumps against her even more and she mutters a curse into the hair that’s suddenly pressed against her mouth, his nose against her collarbone, and adjusts her grip so her arm is wrapped around his chest. “Alright, come on then. Couch time. Not like you’re not used to sleeping on a couch anyway.”

This close, she can smell the sweat he’s coated with, dry and biting, and it doesn’t smell at all like he usually does. It’s musky and makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. “I’m not showering you,” she tells him as she half carries him to the couch and dumps him—gently—onto the cushions. “You’re just going to have to smell and deal with it.”

His head lolls back loosely over the armrest and she frowns, noting the shiny-raw skin surrounding the bandage that this movement exposes. Reaching down, she can feel the heat radiating from him even as she tugs it loose and finds the bite looking horribly swollen and almost certainly infected.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

“Okay,” she says, and presses her hand to the rapid flutter of his pulse in his throat. “Okay, shit, okay. Spencer. Say something dorky and smart, please.”

He closes his eyes.

Okay. Fuck.

“You bastard,” she tells him, because he’s painfully silent and when she presses that hand to his chest, his heart is hammering. “What do I do? Come on, genius, what do I do to help you?”

His lips are cracked. Dehydration. There’s no way she can get enough water in him to reverse that when he doesn’t even seem conscious enough to know to swallow. He needs an IV for that. He needs a doctor.

And she can’t do that.

“You bastard,” she says again, heart sinking, because it’s still at least four hours before Hotch gets back, over twenty-four before JJ and Rossi do, and she has to get help _now_. From the very people she’s pretty sure would happily watch them burn. “If I have to shoot someone, you’re coming to the mandatory therapy with me. Got it?”

He says nothing.

She has to leave him, just for a little bit. He’ll still be here when she gets back. He has to be. “I’m sorry,” she says, to him and to Hotch and to herself, and then she runs.

 

* * *

 

The path to the base camp isn’t anywhere near as long as they’d wanted it to be, but she finds, when she’s pelting full tilt down the damn thing, that it’s plenty long enough. There are several times when she almost goes tits-up on the icy ground, but some sort of long forgotten reflexes come into play and she manages not to break her neck. Fortunately. She imagines that might put a damper on this lovely snowbound holiday they’re having.

Heads swivel around to look at her, wide-eyed, as she flies out of the track and skids to a stop. “Medic?” she wheezes, a stitch biting at her side from the icy air. Morgan’s voice whines in her head. _Should have warmed up, Prentiss._

_Fuck off,_ she thinks back, pushing past the confused looking volunteer and heading for the big red cross on a van nearby. There are lines of tents surrounding her, with the vehicles next to them sunk into the slushy ground and covered in frost. There’s maybe a dozen people left that haven’t already moved out, and every one of them looks glumly resigned. They’re looking for bodies now.

“Agent?” asks the paramedic, ducking out of the back of the ambulance he’s sitting in with a sandwich and a thermos, his face stern. “Has someone been injured?”

“My co-worker,” she answers, feeling her neck prickle as the others gather loosely around them. They could just be curious. “He’s feverish, delirious. He needs medical care, _now_.” Her hand drops to her side. She’s so fucking alone here.

The paramedic drops his sandwich and vanishes, reappearing with a bag immediately. A knot she hadn’t been aware of in her chest loosens slightly. _Maybe he is going to help._ “Of course,” he says, jumping down and tugging the bag over his shoulder. “He’s at the Lodge? How long has he been sick?”

“This morning?” She begins to jog backwards, silently encouraging him to move quicker. The rest of the group begins to disperse, still watching them. “There’s a bite on his shoulder, infected as hell. We cleaned it up yesterday, but—”

The paramedic stalls, looking uneasy, and his mouth opens for a second before snapping shut. “He was bit? By what?”

“The fuck do you think?” someone growls behind her, and suddenly the atmosphere around them is dangerously tense. “I told ya—we should have put those mutts down!”

“We don’t hunt our own,” says another voice, and Emily is totally fucking done with this place. She turns, stares directly into the eyes of the huge chested man standing behind her, and strides forward. She’s getting out now, getting out fast. If the medic follows, all the better, but she’s not going to be able to talk her way out of this with the worry about Reid clawing at her brain.

“They’re not ours,” the broad man says, narrowing his eyes before stepping aside slowly for her. “Shoulda’ dealt with it on our own. All we did is puts you and yours in danger. Shades is a fucking idiot. Alex, what are you doing?”

Emily doesn’t turn around but someone is following her. She tenses. The voice that answers is the paramedic’s. “Going to help. I’m not a part of your war, John.”

She turns them, finding the paramedic looking obstinate. “Thank you,” she says honestly, relief making her light-headed. “We need to hurry. I left him alone—” There’s a ripple of chatter around them and she watches as every head snaps around to look. The paramedic’s eyes widen in something almost like barely restrained fear, inching closer to her before turning to face the small group. He’s just as edgy around them as she is, and she’s not sure what to make of that.

“You left him alone?” says the broad man, John, and his face is a curious mix of concern and dismay. “How long?”

“Long enough to walk down here,” she replies, and the anxiousness is back in full force. “I had to. My team…”

John turns, hesitates, then swears. “Get up there!” he snarls, and two of the group scatter, bolting into the woods. “Move your asses!”

_What the fuck_ , she thinks wildly. _What the fuck is going on?_

“Wait here,” he says, turning and jogging towards them. “We’ll go get him—you follow behind but don’t come up till we say.”

_They’re going to Reid._

_Like fuck they are._

She turns and runs, ignoring the shouts that float after her.

 

* * *

 

She beats them to the cabin, which isn’t surprising because she’s pretty sure her damn feet didn’t even fucking touch the ground, but when she bursts into the room and slams the door shut behind her, the couch is empty. She forgets how to breathe. She tries to call his name but all that emerges is a soft squeak. Her weapon is out, it’s been out since the first rush of adrenaline had slammed into her in the base camp, sending her tearing up the path to her helpless friend. She readies it and slowly, so slowly, clears the room.

The kitchen door opens, letting in a wash of cool air, and she almost shoots him.

“Whoa,” he says, pausing with a glass of water held to his mouth. “Em? What are you doing?”

_What the fuck_ , screams her mind again because he’s gaping at her like _she’s_ the crazy one here, and maybe she is. She lowers her gun. “Spencer,” she wheezes finally, and there’s a band of fear and exhaustion around her chest that’s making it really hard to catch her breath. “You’re okay.”

He blinks and smiles, and the band tightens because _that’s not his smile_. It’s wide and toothy and a little glazed, and if she saw someone walking towards her on the street smiling like that she’d have her keys between her fingers before they could say _hello_.

He licks his lips, almost nervous, looking around like he can’t focus, and there’s a harsh, bitter scent in the air. “I’m okay,” he agrees, nodding sharply, and there’s blood on his shirt. On his shoulder. She stares at it.

“You’re bleeding.” Her voice is a broken whisper. He looks at his shoulder, almost startled, then back at her. She sees the glazed look lift, becoming familiar for a second. Familiar and piercing and _scared_. The stain on his shirt widens gradually as he closes his eyes, face furrowed, shaking his head slowly like he’s trying to wake himself up.

The door slams open and she spins with her gun up, screaming for them to _drop_ before they’re even fully in the doorway. John skids to a stop, one hand raised and dark eyes locked on the barrel of her weapon, and Alex shoves past him almost angrily. His gaze falls instantly on the blood on Reid’s shoulder and he starts towards him, letting his first aid bag slip onto his elbow so he can reach for supplies. “You’re bleeding!” he says, concern in his voice, and she can see the easy calm of the medical professional settling over him. “Sit down, let me look.”

John grabs him and yanks him back. The bag hits the ground as Alex yelps, startled, trying to pull his arm away. Emily goes to shout at him, to say something, but John is staring at Reid like he’s a threat, and Reid is just staring back. There’s no emotion on his face, just a blank kind of interest. It’s a sharp contrast to the uneasiness on John’s.

“Where is she, lad?” he asks, eyes skimming the room.

Emily looks at Reid. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, deadpan, and now all of her nerves are screaming at her because she knows what he looks like when he’s lying. “I’m not entirely sure what’s going on. Who are these people, Prentiss?”

Prentiss.

He never calls her Prentiss.

There’s a snarling shriek from outside and she moves, slipping past John to launch out onto the porch with her gun drawn. A wolf. There’s a wolf on the path, and a woman on the steps, and before she can even process any of it, the wolf lunges.

She shoots. The wolf yelps, the bullet ripping through its leg.

The woman turns and Emily blinks and she’s gone, leaving a dark-coated wolf in her place.

_What_ , she thinks wildly, right before the animal slams into her chest and sends her flying back into the wall.


	7. Reid – Lost in Thoughts All Alone

Emily is there and her arms are around him and he clings, clings, clings but when he wakes up, she’s still gone. He’s burning. He’s sick. He’s alone and his ears ring with echoes of her apologising.

_Emily_ , he thinks wildly, looking up from his place on the couch and finding someone standing over him. _Don’t leave me._

But it’s not Emily.

“Hello,” says the woman (he knows her. How?), and smiles like wolf in the night. Hungry and cunning and _not_ alone. Spencer Reid has been many things in his life, but rarely stupid. Even now, with his mind cooking itself and his body betraying him, rarely stupid.

He rolls, hitting the ground on his knees and using them to propel himself up, and he runs. He’s wearing his gun, but he doesn’t even think to use it.

He doesn’t get far.

Weight on his back and he hits the ground, her on top of him. Tries to flip her off. She’s far stronger than he expected. Her knee on his back, a hand on his shoulder, the hurt one (and he gasps at the pain and squirms but he’s hard in seconds and panting), and he feels her breath on his ear.

“Don’t,” he says, because he’s mostly still himself right now and he _knows_ Emily isn’t far. She wouldn’t leave him. _“Don’t,”_ he says again because he wants and wants and he knows he’s seconds from being lost. _“Aaron!”_ he screams, but no sound comes out, and the woman laughs.

_“He’s too far away to hear you,”_ she says, and his teeth cut his lip as he turns his head to try and breathe, face presses hard against the wooden floorboards and tongue coated in copper. _“But we can go get him after, if you miss him so much.”_

_No,_ Reid thinks, but there’s teeth at the base of his spine that aren’t human and he freezes like a rabbit with the knowledge of how exposed he is.

He thinks that Emily isn’t far. He thinks that Emily’s far enough.

And then those teeth nip at his shoulder and he doesn’t think of much at all.

 

* * *

 

She weaves through his mind like a creeping vine, interlacing into every part of him, and he allows it because he can’t imagine not. He even delights in it, some part of him, because she _loves_ him she says, this is love (no it’s not) and she wants to give him everything.

It’s nothing like Aaron despite the hunger being the same.

His back is against the wall, eyes closed, and her hand is on his shoulder, across the newly opened bite, and she rocks against him, every sweep of her hips taking away any reservations he has about this. He allows it because he can’t think not to.

And what he was reaching for, that thing his body wanted, it’s right there and he reaches, reaches…

Finds it. He shudders and feels his fingers scrabbling at the skin of her back, nails biting, head throbbing as _she_ pulls him and he knows their voices. He’s not alone, the very opposite, and he doesn’t think he remembers how to be.

All he can hear is howling.

She slips away from him, leaving him cold, and he can feel her anger as he stares after her. He tries to follow and stumbles, falls, weak as a kitten. His legs are wrong under him, too long, too few, and he can’t remember how to _be_.

_“Human,”_ she snarls, and vanishes. He whines because her leaving is a physical pain. He stops himself from following thought because (Emily) he’s not sure. _“Hah. You’ll follow me soon enough. They all do.”_

He doesn’t. Not quite yet.

 

* * *

 

He hears Emily before he sees her. Far before any human ears should have been able to. He waits. And walks out when he hears her walking into the cabin. He has a glass to his lip and he’s calm (isn’t he?), except his brain is on fire and _she’s_ leaving and every part of him is screaming at him to _follow followfollowfollow._

Emily spins and her gun is out and he almost snarls at the sight of the round barrel with the acrid gunmetal scent but instead he says, “Whoa,” because she’s going to shoot him (don’t). Then he says, because it’s what he would have two days ago and _she_ told him to be himself (Emily will kill you otherwise), “Em? What are you doing?” (She won’t kill you, Reid, she never would, stop _listening_ ).

But he can’t stop listening.

He doesn’t hear what she replies or what he answers (am I bleeding?) because there’s a howling in his ears and a rushing in his veins and he can still smell her on him, in him, and Emily is between him and her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lies to the other wolf, the bigger wolf (Stronger wolf, but tamer you see. Just a mutt. We’re more than they are, you’ll see). That wolf is trying to turn his team against him, turn Emily against him (stop), so he lies and he lies and he lies and he can’t stop.

There’s a snarl (a mutt) and a yelp (same mutt) and then another, wilder, snarl (mine) and Reid moves on autopilot, following Emily out the door.

There’s a wolf pinning her down at it’s (his wolf. His his his his) jaws are snapping inches from her face. As he watches, Emily slams her knee into the animal’s ribcage, knocking it back, and the wolf slips, falls, lunges as quick as lightning and closes those powerful teeth (grey wolf has a biting capacity of 1,000 to 1,500 pounds of pressure per square inch) around Emily’s leg. She screams.

Reid steps forward, automatic (human), unsnaps the clasp on his holster and settles his palm over the butt of his gun (protective). The wolf turns and looks at him, those eyes, those eyes, and he’s lost again.

“Reid!” someone shouts, but he’s not anymore.

_Come on then,_ the wolf says with her eyes and her grin and her scent. _I told you you’d come to me._

She jumps, runs, and he follows without looking back.

 

* * *

 

The world is a cacophony of sounds and smells and the colours are strange, wrong, and he could make sense of it if only he was alone in his head long enough to do so, but ever since the woman (his) came to him he hasn’t been alone and he can’t remember how to be. His clothes are gone and there are wolves and, at first, they’re smaller than him, height wise, but the woman coaxes and coaxes and shows him how to step away from what he was and now they’re bigger, stronger, older (but wrong. Their minds are wrong and yours is too now).

He has flashes of knowing and stretches of nothing and it should be terrifying but the others in his head seem to draw all his emotions away and share them amongst themselves until there’s not enough left to be notable. It’s empty and frightening (if you could remember how to be frightened) but _she_ assures him it’s how it should be (part of him doesn’t believe her, but it’s a meek part).

Flashes of knowing and she’s against him again and her teeth are at his throat and he’s working within her and that’s (wrong) how it should be.

Flashes of knowing and there’s a smaller wolf cowering in front of him, grey-silver fur marked with every other colour, and he smells (young, scared, sad, male, human-but-not). Reid bares his fangs at him because _she’s_ behind him and he can hear her coaxing again, “ _Show him you’re in control. That he’s weak.”_

That’s also wrong. Teams don’t work like that. His team doesn’t.

(he misses them)

She leaves at some point and he’s with the smaller wolf still and, with another flash of knowing, he turns to him and snuffs (he could get used to this sense, at least. Some part of him delights in the _potential_ of it).

_“She’s not what she seems you know,”_ says the smaller wolf and his voice is young and somehow more him than the other wolves (they’re empty, Reid, they’re just made of her and that’s going to happen to you too if you don’t fight it). _“She just wants control.”_

Reid thinks and thinks and thinks and it’s harder now, but finally he pads up to him (almost night now, hours have passed, what about my _team_?) and says, eventually, _“We can fight though.”_

The smaller wolf looks at him, surprised, shock, and his tail wags slightly. _“Yes,”_ he replies finally. _“But you won’t be able to. Not for long. You don’t have anything to cling to.”_ Another wolf pads past, dark silver, male (brothers), and doesn’t even look at the smaller one. _“She never lets her favourites go,”_ howls the smaller wolf, pained (so much pain in that that he almost checks to see if he’s bleeding, if he’s hurt). _“Not ever. And she **loves** you.”_

They’re running again and hunting and there’s a scent on the wind and a stretch of nothing and only the meek part of him knows this scent. _“Come on,”_ coaxes the woman and he goes, towards that scent.

He knows it.

_Aaron._


	8. Morgan – Mad World

“This is a mistake,” Morgan mutters for what feels like the sixtieth time, and Hotch’s shoulders tense visibly. They’re walking close enough together that Morgan reckons if he was to turn his head at the same time his boss does, the condensation from the other man’s breath would fog up his shades. “Come on, Hotch. We should be back down with Reid and Prentiss. We _should_ be bailing on this whole damn case.”

“There are still people missing,” Hotch says quietly, his eyes locked ahead, and Morgan can only see the fear in his eyes because he knows what to look for. They’re not doing a great job not looking skittish, but both of them are beyond caring. “Still a kid missing, Morgan. Just a kid.”

The group of searchers around them keep clustering in, bunching, and there’s an almost audible tension running through them. Morgan’s starting to feel really fucking hemmed in, and it doesn’t help that the forest around them is getting thicker, closing out what little light they have. He can’t help but obsess over the calm expression on Emily’s face as they’d left her there, alone. So damn capable she probably hasn’t even considered she’s in over her head. They’re all in over their heads. He promises himself that, when they get back, if there’s a hair outta place on either of them, this whole place is going down.

Hotch turns his head and yep, there’s the fog on Morgan’s shades as he opens his mouth to say something, but he’s cut off.

Howls. So many fucking howls and the people around them splinter into shocked groups, some fanning out towards the edge of the narrow path and some bunching in the centre facing outward. Hotch’s weapon is out in seconds, Morgan’s following shortly after, and they stand alone but together.

“Shades,” someone calls, a woman, and she’s got her arm around a searcher who can’t be more than seventeen at the most. Morgan hesitates, fighting the urge to go over there and offer some sort of protection because the woman looks scared and the boy looks terrified. Hotch twitches towards them, his eyes on the boy, and Morgan knows he’s thinking of Jack. “Shades, what the hell? This is our land. They shouldn’t be here.”

“Getting cocky,” Shades mutters, and he inches closer to Hotch. Hotch stiffens, his gun shifting slightly as though the man holding it suddenly isn’t sure what direction it should be facing. “Fuck. Agents, whatever you do, stick behind our lines. We’ll handle this.”

“Just what exactly _is_ this, Sheriff?” Hotch asks coldly, and Morgan shivers as he realizes that Hotch has stepped from his ‘I’m not happy’ persona to his ‘someone’s going down and it sure as hell ain’t my team’ persona. “Because if I find you’ve lured my team here under false pretences and put them in danger…”

“If?” Morgan mutters, and no one is paying attention to him anyway.

The boy screams and someone fires. Morgan whirls and there’s a flash of brown as a wolf streaks past, eyes laughing and mouth wide with glee. It’s a bizarre expression, almost human, and Morgan’s gut drops into his shoes.

“Fuck this, this is _our_ land!” someone yells and Morgan is looking right at the yeller when the man drops his weapon and then drops _his fucking shape_ and turns into a goddamn _wolf what the fuck what the fuck._

“Hotch!” Morgan says or shrieks or yelps, he isn’t quite sure, but when he looks at his boss, the man’s eyes are wide and stunned so he knows he’s not hallucinating.

“Don’t!” yells Shades, “It’s what they want!”

But he’s lost whatever control he has over the terrified group and suddenly Morgan is surrounded by a wave of wolves, snarling, running; scattered humans throughout cling to each other like they’re afraid to let go or be swept away. And then there’s fighting and Morgan tries to aim, but Hotch grabs his arm and pulls him back, away from the savage sounds issuing from the wolves. “We don’t know if they’re friend or foe,” he says firmly, stepping up onto the side of the road and pulling Morgan with him, and Morgan has no idea how the man is so damn _calm_.

“They’re werewolves, Hotch!” Morgan yells over the noise, and laughs once, a freaked out bark of a noise. “Fucking werewolves!”

Hotch just looks at him and his eyebrows twitch and Morgan can’t handle this; he needs someone else to panic with as well just so he knows that he isn’t crazy—that this is actually something worth freaking out over.

A low growl, and Morgan looks down and to the right to find a tan wolf with thin flanks and shaggy fur circling them, hackles up and muzzle wrinkled in a snarl. Each step is careful, dangerous, and his gaze is locked on Hotch.

“Hotch,” Morgan says, loud enough that he can be heard but far more quiet than he intended. “I think maybe this one isn’t friendly.”

Hotch stares the wolf down, gun on its heart and face expressionless. “I don’t want to shoot you,” he says to the wolf, who simply snarls louder and shakes its head. The movement catches the light in its eyes, turning them from dark and empty to a greenish-brown that gleams. “Stand down.”

And Morgan is working with the only man in the world who can go from not knowing that werewolves exist to politely asking one to move out the way all in the space of five minutes.

The wolf moves forward, paws silent on the ground, and Hotch hesitates. Gunfire sprays the dirt in front of them and the wolf dances back, darting away and into the woods, vanishing in a flicker of almost clumsy movement.

Shades steps up beside them, and his expression is frozen. His eyes dart from where the wolf was standing to Hotch, and there’s something in his eyes that he’s not saying. “Don’t hesitate next time,” he says finally, and looks ill. “We’re gonna get you out of here, agents. It’s you they’re after, not us. Follow me, quickly.”

He jogs down the path, wolves moving with him, and Morgan looks around and finds that the road is mostly cleared. The few wolves that linger watch them placidly: licking wounds or barring the roadway, and all of them follow Shades with their eyes. There are still humans among the wolves, and none of them look like their worlds have been rocked, which means, once again, the BAU are the last to know something that could have saved lives.

“What do we do?” he asks Hotch.

There’s a howl behind them. Just one, that melds into many, and Hotch’s mouth thins into a line. There’s a whine of fear nearby. When Morgan looks, the wolf that made the noise is gangly and young and painfully small. The kid. Just a kid, now a wolf.

“We start running,” the woman who’d been holding the kid earlier says, looking around at the woods. “Oh shit, we run. They’re coming back!”

They run.

 

* * *

 

It happens in seconds, the event that brings this from bizarre to nightmarish.

Morgan is behind Hotch, and the young wolf runs alongside. If he doesn’t look down, he can pretend he’s jogging with Clooney, almost. Almost. Aside from Shades who keeps barking orders to the monstrously huge wolves around them, and the wolves who keep listening to those orders.

“Reid has been bitten,” Hotch says suddenly, in between deep even breaths to keep his wind. “He’s been bitten, Morgan. What does that mean?”

And Morgan doesn’t know, but Shades looks troubled.

There’s a flurry of movement and a dark shapes hurtles out and almost takes out Shades. Shades shoots at it, not hitting it, but it doesn’t flinch back.

In seconds they’re surrounded again, silently this time, and none of them make a noise as they drag squealing wolves down. The young wolf doesn’t stand a chance. He goes down in a heartbeat and lasts only a second longer before the white-gold coat of the wolf pinning him is painted in his blood. He doesn’t get up.

Hotch shoots the wolf that killed him. Then he shoots another. Morgan shoots one more. They’re overwhelmed.

Shades screams something inaudible. It could be, _“Run!”_ , but it could also just as easily be, _“Stop shooting!”_ He vanishes, reappears as a wolf that the other wolves surge to get away from, their nervousness around him saving Morgan’s life as he’s almost thrown to the ground. Hotch yanks him back up, slamming the butt of his gun into the wolf with his teeth in Morgan’s coat, the animal releasing him with a yelp and staggering.

The wolf-sheriff jerks his head, eyes wide, in an obvious gesture to _run_ , but they can’t, they can’t get past, and the wolves are between them, pushing them apart, _separating them_. Hotch is over one side of the path, backing up with his gun steady and gaze unshakable, and Morgan is over the other. “Hotch!” he shouts, and the man looks up and pales at the distance between them.

“Run, Morgan!” he shouts over the wolves, and backs up as he says so. “Stay with Shades!”

And he turns and vanishes back into the woods, following the fleeing wolves from their splintered group, the tear-streaked woman who had protected the kid by his side.

Morgan has no choice.

He turns and runs and hopes to god they’re fast enough to escape this.

 

* * *

 

Shades skids to a stop, and they’re no closer to home, the other wolves easily herding them in a zig-zagging path across the face of the slight slope. Morgan pauses to catch his breath. His lungs burn, his body soaked in sweat, and his ankle is a throbbing agony that suggests, at some point, he’s twisted it and not noticed.

There’s a cave ahead, more of a shallow scrape in the rock with a jumble of fallen shale narrowing the entrance to a thin passage barely wide enough for Morgan to get his shoulders through if he turns sideways. The wolf hesitates, peering at it, and looking back at the limping FBI agent. “Bullshit if you think I’m cowering in there,” Morgan snaps, clicking onto the plan as the wolf whines and paws at the dirt.

A flurry of strangeness that makes Morgan’s eyes water and his brain stutter to a halt, failing to process, and Shades is a man again and looking sorely worse for wear. “You’re not going to make it down the mountain,” he says coolly, checking his holster and wiping blood off his mouth with the back of his other hand. “And I’m not going to either if I’m babysitting you. I need my men. I need my hunters. This is insane. They’re picking us off like deer.” Morgan wants to argue, he wants to keep going, but his leg is throbbing and it’s bringing with it a pulsing heat that’s making his head spin. “Here…” Shades hands him the ammo from his belt. “They won’t stick their heads in if they know they’re liable to lose them. I’ll be back before sundown, before the cold sets in.”

And he’s gone. Morgan watches him go, suddenly conscious of the prickle of eyes on the back of his neck, and quickly squeezes himself into the small space. There’s no room for a fire, no way he can make one without exposing himself, and he hopes to hell that Shades is right because it’s going to get damn cold in here without it.

He settles his gun ready on the line of light showing the entrance, leans back on the cold rock with his heels tucked into the sandy ground, and he waits.


	9. Hotch – Hate Me

Morgan shoots him a look that’s three parts scared and four parts furious, and it takes every iota of strength he possesses to turn his back on the _need_ in that expression and jog into the thick trees.

“Stay with me,” he says to the barely calm woman, her eyes dull with grief, and she nods. A radio hangs limply at her hip. He’s almost certain she’s human, and it hardly matters if she’s not because she needs him right now and he’s not going to leave her alone. “With me!” he calls out loud, feeling almost stupid, but it works.

And this is bizarre and his brain keeps tripping over it, running through the woods and feeling the presence of wolves at his side as they run with him. When he slows, they slow, five all up, and they watch him like they’re waiting for instruction. Looking at them, each of them, he wonders how he could ever have been fooled that they were animals to begin with. Their expressions are horrifyingly human.

“We need to get back down to town,” the woman says finally, when they slow once more and it seems like nothing has followed them. That’s good news. It’s also bad. If they’re not following Hotch, then they’re likely after Morgan, and he can’t think about that without thinking about Reid and the glazed look in his eyes and then that leads to Emily…

He forces them out of his head. Surviving comes first. Getting of this mountain—getting _everyone_ off this mountain.

“How many of you are there?” he asks the woman, and she looks confused.

“I’m not a wolf,” she says, her mouth turning down. “My nephew, he… he was. I was just here to stay with him, in this place…”

One of the wolves surges upwards, becoming a thin man with a receding hairline and a bushy moustache. “Not everyone in town is wolfed,” he says, looking around nervously. “Up here though? You find people, no doubt they’re rotten. No good wolf willingly spends time up here, not with _her_. If they’re not mindless, they’re following.”

Hotch checks his ammo. Three left. Not enough. He swallows. He needs _answers_. “Alright,” he says slowly, looking up again. “How many wolves are there up here?”

The man shrugs. “Who knows. Used to be maybe a dozen, twenty at max. Elements kept their numbers down nice. Just those who didn’t want to play nice play by our rules. Then _she_ came along and got them all riled. Said that what’s the point of doing what we can do if we don’t do it.”

“Rapists,” spits the woman, and her mouth is twisted into an almost wolf-like grimace. “They turned my nephew, you know. Those in town, they won’t turn no one who doesn’t want it. Those up here? They don’t give them a fucking choice. I barely managed to get him out of there—if it wasn’t for Shades, I wouldn’t have—and now he’s…” She looks down, biting at her lip.

“Stupid bitch gets off on control.” The man paces slightly, looking around at the four wolves watching quietly. “Got it in her head that to be a leader she’s gotta control her pack. That’s not how it works. No wolf is an island.”

A cold wind cuts through Hotch and he shivers. The woman inches closer, her lips blue against the redness of her cheeks. “They’re going to cut us off from the town, aren’t they?” she whispers, looking at the man. “They’re done just claiming the forest as theirs. They’re taking our homes now, aren’t they?”

When the man grits his teeth and shrugs, Hotch pushes thoughts of his team, of _Reid_ , out of his head again. He can’t help them yet. The only way he can is by staying alive. “Weather blowing in fast,” the man says, glancing up at the shifting canopy. “Won’t be hard for them to cut us off once it blows in. And Kara, you and the agent, you won’t last long up here once the wind starts up.”

“What are you suggesting?” Hotch asks, despite the thousand and one questions clamouring to be answered at once.

The answer is unpleasant, and exactly what he expected. “We bunker in. Shades will be getting his hunters up here—we outnumber the rogues when we’re together. We find a cave system, get a fire going for you two, and we wait.”

Hotch swallows, his throat drying as the icy wind strips the moisture from his exposed face. “My team are out here. Agent Morgan, Agents Jareau and Rossi… they’re on the mountain.” _And Reid, and Prentiss, they’re alone…_

“I’m sorry,” says the woman, and turns to follow the wolves as they form a wobbly line through the trees. “But there’s nothing we can do.”

He has no choice but to turn his back on his team and follow them.

 

* * *

 

The night comes in hard and fast, and sleep is a forgotten luxury. Even if he wanted to, the hours stretching between him and the last time he’d seen his team would have made it impossible. He has a duty of care to them. It’s his job to protect them, to keep them from as much harm as possible while still allowing them the leeway to do their jobs. And he’d brought them here, despite his misgiving, kept them here when everything had pointed to it going wrong, and now they’re all paying the price.

The fire is a soft crackling heat in front of him. Two of the wolves lay on either side of him, their shaggy sides radiating a softer warmth that means he’s not cold, although barely comfortable. The shallow dip they’re sheltering in keeps most of the wind out. Outside, three wolves pace. On guard. The woman is curled up, awake, at his side. She’d like him to believe she’s asleep, so he allows her that. For now. The radio is next to her, still resolutely silent. No one answering, despite their best efforts. Something howls, down the mountain. Gunshots echo. He flinches with every hollow sound. _Please don’t be my team. Please don’t be my team…_

“What happens if I get bitten?” he says suddenly, and both wolves twitch at the sudden sound of his voice.

The woman’s voice is muffled by her arm, but audible enough despite that. “Nothing, really. You won’t turn anyway. But it will, uh…” She trails off.

A dark chuckle and the thin man from before slips in. “Makes ya horny as hell,” he says with a wry grunt. “But you keep your mind, mostly. You’ll just probably have some fantastic sex with whoever is willing until it fades. Why do you think we got humans here? They’re don’t come here for the weather, that’s for sure.”

Hotch stills. Reid, the morning that felt like an eternity ago, the desperate way he’d pressed against him, needing him. The confusion in his eyes when it had been over, barely hidden by the satisfaction brought on by their sudden tryst.

There’s something cold and heavy building in his belly. The sinking suspicion that it hadn’t _been_ Spencer. That it had been the bite. And Hotch had… he gags, barely hiding the noise.

The man continues cheerfully, not seeming to notice the horror that’s choking Hotch with every word. “Takes more than a bite to turn you, that’s how this whole fuck-up started. Shades came in and said it can’t be considered consensual to turn someone once the bite happens because it makes them pliant to the idea. Said anyone biting anyone without proven consent gets run outta town.”

“You need blood and sex as well,” the woman says, rolling over to face them. Her eyes glint in the firelight. “Blood to transmit the infection. Sex to trigger the change. Without all three, you don’t turn. And if you get all three from the wrong wolf…”

The man whistles, crouching and poking at the fire. “You don’t get your mind back at all. Which is what Shades was trying to stop. He thought by bringing your people in it’d show them that he’s not going to back down on this… instead, he’s just added you lot to their ranks.”

“My…” Hotch chokes on the word, “Partner. My teammate. He was bitten. He was… sick. Really sick.”

The woman is watching him. “Doubt he was just bitten then,” she says dully. “They bit my nephew. I shot the wolf on him. Covered him in blood. After that, there was no stopping him. He just kept… it just kept getting worse and worse until eventually Shades agreed he’d have to be turned. The virus doesn’t let them walk away once it’s gotten a hold.”

“If your boy was bit and blooded,” the man says, and he sounds almost sympathetic, “he’s probably already with them, agent. Well and truly one of them. This is what our community was made to _avoid_.”

Hotch can’t say anything. He can’t find the air to speak. He stares into the fire and he _hopes_.

 

* * *

 

It gets colder. Two of the wolves huddle in a group, then split away. Hotch watches them vanish into the frost-coated night. They’re going to try and see if anyone is coming.

It gets darker. Someone screams distantly. He knows that scream.

“Let me go!” he roars, struggling against the man’s iron-clad grip on his arms. “That’s my agent. That’s JJ—get the hell off of me!”

“Stop it!” the man grunts, copping an elbow to his face. Hotch kicks back, slamming him against the wall, and turns on him, his hand on the butt of his gun. “It’s a ruse, damnit! They’re trying to draw you out!”

Hotch chokes back his anger. “She’s one of mine!”

“Not anymore.”

He goes cold. An ice cold horror that leaves him reeling and shaken, his mind blank. “I have to protect her,” he tries to tell the man, but it just comes out like pleading.

The man looks away, refusing to meet his gaze. “Ah, I’m sorry, agent,” he mumbles to the ground. “But in that you’ve already failed.”

 

* * *

 

Morning and Hotch is empty. The dark recedes and it takes with it everything that he thought he was. A leader, a friend, an agent. Lost in the night and that scream and his inaction.

They’re kicking sand over the coals of the fire and Hotch is trying to move against the stiffness in his limbs, when a wolf growls, low and slow. “Someone coming,” the woman says, and Hotch draws his gun and ignores their noises of dismay as he walks, walks, walks, finds himself standing in the centre of the clearing and looking towards the noise, ready.

He’s failed enough.

Someone appears, limping, hurt. Her head hangs low, dark hair curtained over her face. He recognises her anyway. There’s blood on her clothes, a gun on her hip. She staggers, one knee colliding with the stone ground, not putting her hands out to break her fall. He doesn’t know the man behind her, the one who puts his hand out as though to catch her and freezes when he sees Hotch standing there.

“Emily,” the man calls, and she looks up slowly.

Hotch wonders what he’ll see when he meets her gaze. If it will be a human looking back up at him, or a wolf.

He levels his gun and waits.


	10. Rossi – The Man Comes Around

David Rossi has been called many things in his life, but very rarely a coward. He feels like a coward now. A very, very cold coward.

A very, very cold coward with a goddamn stick up his ass.

To amuse himself, he resorts to alternating between singing, airing all his complaints into the resolutely silent radio, and occasionally chatting to the milling wolves below. “You,” he announces, shifting on the slick branch and peering down at the closest wolf wandering around the base of the tree, “look ridiculous. Look at you. You’ve got the most ridiculous coat of fur I’ve ever seen on a wolf. If wolves had daytime TV, you’d star as the teenage heartthrob who plays guitar and looks brooding all the time. You’d get broken up with, constantly. You’d drive one of those little hatchback cars and drink shit coffee.”

The wolf itches at his ear and wanders off, ignoring Rossi’s rambling. He shifts again on the branch. His ass is cold. His hands are beyond frozen. He tries to move them along the branch he’s clinging to, but they ignore him and stay solidly attached. He’s probably going to get frostbite. The temperature drops while he’s thinking about it and he groans and smacks his head against the branch, feeling frost fall from his face to his lap. Yep. Definitely frostbite. He coughs. The sound hurts. His bones ache, his legs are lumps of useless meat, his face is frozen.

All jokes aside, he’s going to die in this tree just as surely as if he climbs down to play tag with the doggies on the ground.

He looks down again. There’s a trio of wolves watching him, the one constant of the impossible hours that have passed since tumbling down that hill and taking to this fucking tree to get away from the animals that chased him. As the dawn had come, so had the wolves. These three seemed pretty set on hanging around.

The scrawny one wanders off again, disinterested in the other two, and, as he watches, the creamy coated wolf patiently pads after it, herding it back to the hulking shape of the brown wolf watching. The small one growls, the thin noise floating up to Rossi, snapping at the white one. It follows anyway.

“I know how you feel, friend,” Rossi says glumly. Something wet trickles down the back of his neck, sneaking into the layers of coats that are all that’s keeping him alive. “I’ve been married before. They’re all the same.”

The creamy wolf looks up at that, and he fancies its face is almost disapproving. He pokes his tongue out at it. Hey, he’s probably going to be dead soon. A glance up confirms that the weak morning light is hidden by the flurries of snow that are beginning to fall.

Might as well be childish while he can be.

 

* * *

 

The creamy wolf is patiently kind. The dark one looms protectively. The shaggy tawny one is… twitchy. Snappy. Distracted.

Rossi can’t put his finger on why, but this combination of personalities terrifies him on a deep level, and he could probably work it out but he _really_ doesn’t want to. Instead, he focuses on the radio. Snow builds on the branch around him. His fingers slip on the buttons, he almost drops it twice. He stops joking around.

“This is SSA David Rossi, please, please, if anyone is listening. I’m alone, my team is alone. Please…” He trails off. Underneath him, there’s a new wolf. The skinny one walks by its side. His two friends keep right back, both bristling. “We’re gonna die up here,” he whispers, letting go of the button and closing his eyes. He’s tired, achingly tired, and colder than he’d thought it was possible to be. The tree shudders slightly. The new wolf bares its fangs at him. He bets they could climb up here if they wanted to. He’d seen them turn from human to wolf. They’re just torturing him now. “Just wanna see an old man cry, do you?” he shouts down, his voice a harsh croak. He coughs again. “Fuck you. Mutts.”

The radio hums. He almost drops it again in his shock. The voice is distant, broken, but so familiar Rossi almost _does_ cry. “Dave? Da… are you? Ar-kay?”

“Aaron! Aaron, Christ, are you alright?” Rossi gasps, almost pressing the radio to his mouth in his desperation to speak to his friend. The voice that returns is impossible to discern. “Hang on, Hotch. Just hang on. Give me a sec.”

This is going to hurt.

He straightens, every part of his body _screaming_ as he tucks the radio in the front of his coat and inches up the tree, using his hands to drag himself up, his bad leg hanging uselessly. Inch by inch. Slowly, painfully slowly, and if he doesn’t hurry up he’s going to lose Hotch, but he simply can’t make his body respond faster. There’s an echo-y bark under him, almost worried, but when he looks down his foot slips and he slams into the branch on his stomach with all of his weight. Wheezing, gasping, coughing, breath gone and lungs screaming.

He keeps going. His eyes are watering, the tears freezing as soon as they slip onto his cheek and leaving frozen trails of pain.

He can’t.

He has to stop.

His fingers fumble the button. It takes him five goes to press it down. Another five to form words. “Fucking freezing.”

“Christ, Dave. I thought… I thought the worst.” Hotch sounds wrecked. He sounds cold. He sounds _clear_. Rossi could sing, if he had the air to. “Are you okay?”

Rossi almost laughs. “Oh, you know. Bit chilly. Bit battered. Think I might have broken my leg, actually, but the cold’s kinda working for me there. Can’t feel a damn thing.”

A sharp hiss that sets the radio to humming. “Can you run?”

“Fuck no. I barely managed to get myself up this tree. By the way, I’m up a tree. Lovely view. Company is questionable, though.”

“Dave.” He guesses it was a bit much to expect a laugh from his friend. “They’re werewolves.”

And there it is. He’s too damn old for this crap. “Yeah. I know. I lost JJ, Hotch. She was behind me and there… I lost her.”

“I know. She’s with them. So… so is Reid.” Hotch’s voice cracks and it’s not the radio. “Prentiss is with me.”

“She okay?”

Hotch doesn’t answer, not right away. “Are any of us?” he says eventually, bitterly. Rossi takes the chance to look down and examine the wolves under him. Really examine them. The creamy one is almost invisible against the snow.

The dark one watches him sadly.

“I think,” Rossi says finally, “I know where JJ is.”

Silence. One of the wolves below him howls. “We’re coming to you, Dave,” Hotch says, and his voice is intent. “We’re coming to you, right now. Stay where you are.”

Sleep beckons. The dark and the cold beckon. If he sleeps up here, he’ll never wake up. “Sorry, Aaron,” he says quietly, and the tears aren’t really just because of the wind anymore. “It’s go down there and get chewed on, or stay up here and become the worst kind of popsicle.”

The radio crackles. “Don’t go down there. Don’t go to her. You don’t know what they do, it’s sex, they use—”

“They’re gonna turn me into one of them, right? A—this is still ridiculous by the way—werewolf? That’s okay. It’s fine. Look, the doc down in the town, he’s a wolf. So’s his son. And they weren’t crazy or brainwashed or whatever the fuck is going on with our team right now. Which means this can be fixed.”

“We don’t know that. I don’t know that.”

“Well you better work it out then, yeah? You know I don’t like being rescued much, Aaron, but I’m fucking relying on you to help me this time. Okay?” He’s pleading. He’s pleading like his life depends on it, and maybe it does.

Silence. Then, “Okay.”

Rossi’s not one for goodbyes. He takes his finger off the button and hits the off switch. Hotch doesn’t need to know what happens next.

He climbs down.

 

* * *

 

It takes him longer than he’ll ever admit getting to the bottom of the tree. He sits on a branch low enough that he won’t break his neck if he falls, but high enough that the wolves will have to work to drag him out of it if they feel inclined. Though, he doesn’t think they will. There’s only his three down there. Two of them watch him. The third paces, teeth bared, a hungry gleam in its familiar eyes.

Not it. His. His familiar eyes. Rossi chokes back something that’s almost a gasp but not quite a sob. _Sorry kid. Should have done better by you._

The cream one whines.

“Alright, lobos. This is going to suck for all of us, right?” The wolves stare at him. The tan one paces. “You know,” Rossi says quietly, knowing all three can hear him, his eyes locked on the tan animal. There’s something in his eyes, something empty, and it makes Rossi want to hit something, to shout, to rage. _Bitch_. “I’d prefer… I’d prefer if the kid could look me in the fucking eye tomorrow when this is all over. Because he’s gonna kill himself with guilt over this when Hotch comes to get us.” He pauses. The white one narrows her eyes. Blue eyes.

Damn.

“Please, JJ?” he says. She looks at him. She nods. And she steps forward.

_Sorry, Will,_ Rossi thinks glumly, and he drops out of the tree.


	11. Emily – Because the Night

Emily staggers up from the porch, her thigh a mass of pulsing pain, and the wolf is gone.

So is Reid.

“Oh no you fucking don’t,” she gasps, pressing her hand to her leg and reaching for her gun with bloodied fingers. She’s unsteady, wavering, and she still pelts into the forest after her friend and the bitch of a wolf that took him.

Werewolves?

Well. At least it’s a change from cannibals. Reid is _never_ going to stop talking about this, she just knows it.

There are thumping footsteps behind her and she turns, her aim remarkably steady considering she can feel her foot squishing in her shoe from the amount of blood her sock has soaked up. Alex pauses, staring at her gun barrel like he’s never seen one before. He probably hasn’t. She lowers it, turns, and doggedly continues chasing her friend at a fast limp.

“Um,” he calls after her. “You’re…. bleeding a lot.”

“I’m busy,” she grits out, not looking back. “So unless you have a leash on you, fuck off.” She has absolutely no desire to talk to anyone in this godforsaken crazy-ass wolf-riddled fucking spit of a—

“Will you at least let me stop the bleeding? You won’t catch him like that.”

She stops again and turns. She contemplates shooting him. The worst bit is, she knows he’s right.

That only makes her want to shoot him more.

“My friend,” she begins, and her heart is hammering at a million miles an hour, sweat getting into her eyes despite the cold and her pants slapping wetly against her skin, “just fucked off into the woods. After a wolf. A wolf that is also a woman. You knew this was going to happen. You bastards knew about her, didn’t you?”

He nods, sharply, and before she can stop him he drops to his knees, touching her leg. She gasps at the touch, almost leaning into it. _What the fuck?_

“She’s a werewolf,” he says. Emily takes a moment to process that. Okay. She’d worked out that much herself. She can deal with this. “Uh… your friend is probably one too, now. Um. He’s… not going to come back with you.”

“Like hell he’s not,” Emily snarls, staring down at the wave of the man’s hair as he digs bandages out of his bag and wraps them around her leg, pants and all, wadding up a bunch to press against the worst of the bite. “Did I say he gets a choice in the matter?”

Alex looks up at her, an odd gleam in his eye. “You can’t go up there alone,” he says, and now his tone is miserable. It’s almost identical to Reid’s tone when he has bad news. “The bite… you won’t turn, but you’ll be… susceptible to them.”

Like she’s letting any of them near her again anyway. She tugs her leg out of his grip. It’s fine. It will keep. “I’m not leaving him,” she says, checking her gun, and then she walks away.

They don’t leave each other behind. Not ever.

 

* * *

 

He follows her. He mutters for half of the walk, goes shockingly quiet for the rest. Emily won’t admit that she’s almost glad for the company. She says almost because, as the day ticks ever so much closer to night, she’s starting to think that maybe she should have listened to him. It’s not the pain that worries her. It’s not the bleeding; that’s slowed right down. It’s not the way it makes her gait uneven, which threatens to dump her on her ass more often than not. That last thing has a tendency to have Alex put his hand out to steady her, and what worries her the most is _how much she wants him to._

She swallows again and he’s talking, the timbre of his voice deep, and she has to focus to not slip into the voice and lose herself in it. Her thigh is pulsing with pain, her belly is twisted, and she’s so fucking turned on by him that she can’t think.

_Looking for Reid, looking for Reid, looking for Reid,_ she chants in her head, and determinedly doesn’t think about Alex or his voice or his fingers or his cock, except she is thinking about that last one, and with that comes the knowledge of how it would taste or look or feel, especially inside her, moving inside her, filling her…

“Fuck,” she swears, and stops, pressing the flat of her palm against the front of her crotch and trying to stop herself from rocking against it.

Alex looks at her. “Yeah,” he says, mouth twitching. “That’s kinda what I meant. I’m not sleeping with you, by the way. You intimidate the shit outta me and that’s hot as hell, but I prefer my women clear minded.”

“Damn right you’re not sleeping with me,” she chokes out between clenched teeth. “We haven’t found Reid yet.”

Alex swallows. “Yeah,” he grunts, looking around at the darkening sky. “But I bet we will. You’re a beacon to every wolf in the forest right now. We should go back.”

No.

“No. We’re not leaving him out here.” She’s determined. This isn’t how it ends for them, any of them. If she hadn’t left him alone, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

_If, if, if._

“Let’s keep going then,” Alex says, walking past her, and she follows and tries not to stare at his ass, “because I’m not leaving you either.”

 

* * *

 

They have to turn back. It’s cold, it’s dark, and Emily knows where they are, but only just. She can’t take Alex further into danger.

“Are you sure?” he says when she finally says it, and she can only wordlessly nod. Reid could be anywhere. Her team, all of them, could be anywhere. Maybe he’s back at the cabin with his maps and his bed socks and his… she wishes she could believe that.

A branch cracks. Emily steps in front of Alex, gun ready. He’s shivering, nervous, his shoulder brushing hers. She ignores it. She ignores it, she ignores it, she doesn’t lean back into that warmth, she doesn’t…

Another snap.

“I’m armed,” she calls, and a half-choked out sob echoes back. With a lurch of her gut, she _knows_ that sob. “JJ!”

Her friend stumbles out of the bushes, face ghastly in the gloom, blonde hair hopelessly tangled around her wild eyes. “Emily?” she calls, and practically throws herself into her arms.

Emily tugs her close, feeling a sob shaking her body, shushing her automatically.

“Werewolves,” JJ mumbles into her chest, pressing close against her and laughing hollowly. “Werewolves, Em. How much would Spence _love_ this?” And then she’s crying, properly, helplessly.

“I should look at her,” Alex says, standing close and watching them. “She’s been out in the cold, she’s probably in shock.”

“I’m not cold at all,” JJ says blankly, straightening slightly, and she’s close enough that Emily can feel the way her heart is jackrabbiting in her chest, and feel the waves of warmth coming from her slim body. Her voice is odd. Her eyes are odd.

Alex shines the light on her face and she twitches back, Emily stopping her from ducking away by tightening her arm around her waist. “Hey, hey,” Emily says soothingly. “It’s alright. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” JJ says, and Emily’s heard that before.

Not even that long ago.

The flashlight dances down JJ’s body and settles on her calf, the bloody tatters of her pants. _Shit._ “Did you get bit?” Emily asks, leaning back to look down at the injury. JJ’s hands tug at her belt, not letting her pull away.

“I’m fine,” JJ repeats, and she’s shaking now. Her nails scrabble at Emily’s waist, slipping up her shirt, tracing up her belly and leaving trails of heat that travel straight to her crotch and leave her reeling. “I’m fine. You smell nice, Em. Spence was right. Your heart is too fast. Listen.” She presses her mouth to Emily’s collarbone, nipping at the skin, her hand travelling around to rest warmly in the small of Emily’s back. There’s a hard thigh between Emily’s legs and a mouth on her neck, and she’s not entirely sure she has control of this situation anymore.

“Alex,” she gasps, involuntarily rolling her hips forward against the leg that JJ has pressed against her and feeling the other woman moan against her skin. _“Alex.”_

He appears, eyes wide and blinking owlishly over JJ’s shoulder. “Ah,” he stammers. “I mean. I could stop her but… she’s… going to focus on one of us. I don’t know her. I’m not… I don’t want. She might hurt herself if I stop her.” He looks woefully miserable. She’s just glad he’s not Morgan.

“Come on,” Emily says, tugging JJ along with her. “Let’s get you home.”

“Okay,” JJ says absently, blank-faced and placid.

They manage to get her most of the way back to the cabin. _Mos_ t of the way. Then, she starts veering away, towards the woods, eyes distant.

“JJ, come on, back here,” Emily says for the thousandth time, grabbing her arm and yanking her back towards the path. “Christ. I’m glad we didn’t take Reid for a walk. This is like herding a cat. Why is she so much more out of it than I am?”

“Blood,” Alex says, resting his hand on JJ’s shoulder and pushing her forward gently. “Not all of it is hers. She’s going to turn, Emily. It’s just a matter of when. And who.”

“We’ll fix her,” Emily snaps, her hand squeezing JJ’s tighter. “Her and Reid, they’ll be fine.”

Alex says nothing. JJ just closes her eyes and stumbles, turning her head back and forth like she’s trying to listen to something far away. Emily loops an arm around her, pulling her upright. They don’t speak, not for a little. Then, “Look after Henry for me, if I can’t?”

Emily’s heart almost plummets into her gut. “What?” she asks, stopping and facing the other woman. “JJ, no, don’t do that. You’re fine.”

JJ shakes her head violently, blue eyes glinting with tears. “No, I’m not,” she says, her voice shattered and so much like Reid’s that Emily feels sick. “No… I’m not, Em.” She leans forward, almost like she’s going to hug her, and Emily doesn’t realize what she’s doing until the second that their lips brush together. Once, twice, once more, and then again, hungrier this time. The burning is back and Emily’s head spins with _want oh god yes_ , barely held back by the worry and fear of this moment and all the moments preceding it. There’s a sharp, spreading warmth in her thigh and a liquid heat in her crotch, and she can taste copper on JJ’s lips.

“Jayge,” she says, coaxing almost, “Stop, come on.”

“Don’t stop,” JJ corrects her, slipping her hand up under her shirt and coats to cup her breast through her bra, thumb trailing on the edge. Emily’s back thuds against a tree and vaguely, far away, she can hear someone swearing, but it’s impossible to focus on when the weight on her hips has been replaced by JJ’s other hand slipping between her legs and tracing the seam of her pants with deft fingers. “Please… Emily. I need…” Every word is punctuated by her mouth finding a new place to taste: first Emily’s jawline, now her neck, the base of her throat, her shoulder, and it’s all _too much, fuckfuck._

“Okay,” she says wildly, head spinning and she wants this, oh god she wants this, but they have to go, there are people that need them. She kisses her hair, her cheek, tasting salt. JJ looks right through her when she does. “Okay, fine. We can do this. At the cabin. If you come back to the cabin, we’ll do whatever you want.”

“Anything?” JJ asks, and Emily hadn’t noticed her undoing her belt, but suddenly there’s a hand in her pants and a finger slipping into the side of her underwear and tracing the wetness within and Emily bucks into that finger without thinking, choking back a moan. “Because I really…” The finger trails up, traces her clit softly, teasingly, and Emily can’t think, “… need…” Back down again and it dips, explores, coaxes, and Emily moans what could have been her name or just a noise as it slips inside her slowly, so slowly, “… to be fucked, Emily.”

_Ohmygod,_ Emily thinks, and she’s shaking, feeling her body clenching around that finger as it’s joined by another and JJ rocks up against her, eyes closed and mouth slightly parted. “JJ, please, please, I’m…”

“Coming,” JJ practically purrs in her ear, crooking her fingers and finding the spot that makes Emily fall apart in her arms, and she is, she is, finding the other woman’s mouth as she does so, so she can taste the flavour of her name as it’s moaned back at her. “My turn,” JJ coaxes when Emily opens her eyes and Emily nods, mind blissfully empty, because that’s how it should go, that’s only right, and Emily wonders distantly how the other woman will taste.

“Oh shit,” says a voice far too close to them, and Emily turns her head to find a man backing up to them, shoulders stiff, and there’s a jolt of lightning that sparks down her spine at the thought of him joining them, his mouth and his cock and his hands, _yes_ … “Emily. Emily, shit, look up.”

She does and the arousal vanishes as quickly as it had appeared. She pulls JJ close, ignoring the way the woman rubs against her, and reaches for her gun with her other hand.

The wolves are silent as they surround them, but their eyes are all the same.

Hungry.

 

* * *

 

“Back up,” Emily says coolly to the closest of the wolves, with JJ trembling at her back. Emily doesn’t look at her because she knows it’s not fear that’s making her friend shake. It’s something far closer to excitement.

The wolf ignores her. It tilts its head and makes a calling sort of whine. JJ twitches towards it.

Emily has a split second to make a decision. There are three wolves. One dangerously close to her, to JJ. Two standing back.

JJ steps around her and her face is Reid’s again, blank. Empty empty empty and Emily has to stop this. The wolf tries to step between her and JJ and _nope, not happening, Cujo. Emily Prentiss is officially 110% done with this shit._

“Hey!” Emily yells, and the wolf looks at her. “Fuck. Off!”

The sound of her boot connecting with the wolf’s muzzle is the sweetest sound she’s heard all day. The wolf staggers back, legs skidding out from under it, and tumbles onto its ass in a flurry of grey fur. Then, it staggers up and keeps going up, until it’s a man and not a wolf at all. She’s only a little shocked. She gets the feeling she’s not going to be shocked by a whole lot of things anymore.

“I will shoot you in the face,” she warns him, and Alex chokes out a laugh from behind them. JJ is still out of reach, and the man is between them, and Emily has a horrible feeling she won’t pick them if it comes down to a choice. “Get the hell out of my way.”

“You gonna shoot all of us?” the wolf-man asks, raising his hands and smiling grossly, his jaw already bruising. He points from one wolf to another, four all up, still smiling. “Cos, pretty lady, I promise you. One of them… one of them is someone you love. You don’t know which one. Now shoot us, I dare you.”

Emily looks at him and then she looks at the wolves, each of them in turn. Nothing familiar looks back. He’s bluffing.

She can’t take that risk.

“JJ, don’t,” she says, but JJ walks away without looking back, her eyes locked on a tan wolf hovering in the tree-line. “JJ!”

“Too late, girl,” the wolf-man says, watching her walk away. “You’re alone now. The last of them. We’ve got them all now, your little team. And we’ll come for you too… if you don’t come to us first.”

She aims but he’s gone, a wolf again, and they’re alone. “Damnit, JJ,” she whispers, and closes her eyes.

Alone is right.

 

* * *

 

They don’t make it back to the cabin. The wolves herd them, like fucking animals. Their only option is to go up the mountain and hope, somehow, to slip away. At least the fear is really good at making it easy to forget her leg and everything that comes with it.

Morning dawns. They’re still walking. Alex stops suddenly. She stumbles, falls, her knee aching dully as it hits the stone.

“Emily,” he says, and she pushes past her exhaustion to look up. Hotch. He’s staring at her like she’s a ghost, his gun on her heart.

She’s not even ashamed of the tears that well up. “Aaron,” she says, her voice cracking, and he lowers the gun in a heartbeat, his face turning soft and thankful all at once. “I lost JJ. And Reid. I’m so sorry.”

He covers the space between them in a heartbeat. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, pulling her close into a hug that’s nowhere near as awkward as she’d have expected it would be. “We’ll find them. I promise.”


	12. Morgan – Monster

Night brings an uncomfortable kind of quiet to the forest. Morgan knows forests. Not as well as JJ, nowhere near as well as JJ, but he knows them enough to know that this kind of waiting quiet is a warning. _Something’s watching you_ the quiet screams, and Morgan listens.

He presses his back against the wall of the cave and keeps his eyes locked on the opening. His gun is slick, hands sweating just enough for the cold to burn his skin. His eyes waver, even as he keeps alert by trailing his gaze across the slit of the entrance, blurring and threatening to close. Every time he blinks, he expects something to be staring back at him upon opening them again.

Nothing does.

Yet.

His throat prickles with the bitter air, reminding him that it’s only too easy to forget that cold can dehydrate just as quickly as the heat. He coughs and his lungs burn. He wonders if he’s getting sick. Sick like Reid, maybe. If he collapses here, he’ll be dog chow by morning.

Shifting slightly, pins and needles in his legs make him grit his teeth and bring a fresh wave of throbbing pain to his ankle. Turned it probably, on the way in here. He glances down, letting his attention waver from the opening for just a second, the injury impossible to see in the pitch black. Instead, he crouches and runs the fingers of his free hand under the hem of his pants, feeling his fingers catch on the sticky suggestion of dried blood, brushing the slightest hint of a wound with his fingertips. Shit. One of those bastards must have nicked him.

Reid got bit. Then Reid got sick.

He coughs again.

A rock shifts, just a pebble. Could be anything. Morgan stares at the entry, at the barest hint of what could be moonlight glinting on the slick rock. It flickers.

He fires and a yelp rewards him, followed by the sound of scrambling paws.

“Any of you sticking your nose in here is going to get it shot off,” he shouts, and a low growl follows. He checks his ammo.

Four.

That’s okay. They don’t know that. He’s just gotta bluff them out until Shades gets back. That’s it. He closes his eyes and does the closest thing to praying that feels hopeful right now. _Just hang in there, Derek Don’t let your momma down now by dying in some godforsaken forest in the middle of nowhere._ _Don’t let Pen down._

The waiting begins.

 

* * *

 

The darkness turns absolute. Before, Morgan could see the puff of his breath in front of his eyes. Now, he can’t even see his hand if he holds it in front of his face.

They wait for that darkness and they try to sneak in under the cover of it. He shoots one when he hears the sound of something brushing against the entrance. There’s the sound of rock splintering and a wet crack as something falls.

Silence. He wishes he still had his flashlight. Probably somewhere in this forest, hopelessly lost to him. Just like his team.

Three bullets left.

He’s sweating with fear. This kind of terror, this kind of waiting, it breaks people down like they’re made of glass and being tapped away at by a hammer. There’s only so long he can stand trembling in a cave before he starts shooting at shadows. And he does, feeling sweat dripping down his back and his leg shaking, shaking, throbbing, burning…

Two bullets now and the muzzle flash illuminates the empty eye of a wolf slumped in the doorway, the other an empty, bloodied socket. It also leaves red lights dancing across his retinas, sending his brain into overdrive.

A low growl.

One bullet now.

He gasps, the air hard to breathe around a chest that’s tightening and choking him. The sound is ragged. It cracks the silence and trails off into what he’d call a sob if he wasn’t so determined to be in control. He’s not cold. He’s burning and shaking and his leg buckles, bringing him down.

Light dances on the cave wall, through the opening, and Morgan can’t look away from the slow drip of blood down the dead monster’s gaping muzzle from the ruined remains of its eye. His other eye is hazel. A human colour. A human. A human that will be buried a wolf, if anyone bothers to bury it at all.

“Who’s there?” he rasps, aiming again. The flashlight means people. It means someone’s come. But they’re werewolves, hah, they’re _monsters_ and monsters don’t only come in the darkness. Morgan knows that better than anyone. He wipes the back of his hand against his forehand, clearing the sweat away, clearing his vision.

One bullet.

He sights.

Someone slides through, placing their knee on the dead wolf like they hardly even notice what’s beneath them, using their hand on the wolf’s shoulder to stabilize themselves as they sidle in. The beam of the flashlight hits Morgan’s eyes, blinding him.

He can’t see.

“Who are you?” he snaps, holding the gun still. He’ll shoot. He’ll fucking shoot. They don’t say anything. He squeezes the trigger and the light dances down once more as the figure straightens slightly, still half crouched on the wolf, and regards him with blank eyes set in a familiar face.

Morgan jerks the gun up, his finger skipping in his haste to wrench it away from the trigger, dropping it as the shock of what _almost_ happened thunders through him and chases away the burning.

“Reid, fuck!” he yells, and his voice cracks. “I almost shot you!”

The corner of Reid’s mouth flickers, nearly a smile, and he tosses the flashlight down. It rolls, bumping against the gun and Morgan’s boot. There isn’t enough space in here for him and Reid; they’ll be pressed together if he comes in any closer. Morgan’s face flushes as a rush of heat symbolizes the burning returning, the fever. Just a fever. He picks up the flashlight and his gun with trembling hands and shines it at Reid’s chest, careful not to blind the kid. “Reid?”

He’s staring right at his friend when the man, the man Morgan has known and worked beside and fucking _loved_ for seven years, laughs brokenly, shudders, and drops into the shape of a shaggy wolf with shadowed eyes and a twitching muzzle.

Morgan doesn’t shoot him. He doesn’t shout. He just stares and the wolf, _Reid_ , slips out the cave and into the night.

A laugh echoes back, and it’s feminine and mocking.

He puts aside the horror. He puts aside the fear. Neither of them matter now. Not now. Not now that he _knows_. If they’ve got Reid, they could have anyone. Any one of them. The dead wolf grins. It has hazel eyes. Spencer isn’t the only one with dark eyes.

Emily’s eyes are brown. So are Hotch’s. Are Rossi’s? He can’t remember. He gags.

The ground is cold when he sits. He puts the gun next to him. He cradles the flashlight in his hands. Wolves flash past the entrance, blurred in the shivering beam of light. He can’t shoot them. Not any of them. Not now that he knows what he knows.

They’re just playing with him now.

And all he can do is wait.

 

* * *

 

Reid comes back when the burning is all Morgan knows.

It comes as a fog, creeping up his body, and he jerks awake from a sleep he doesn’t remember slipping into to find his skin on fire and his cock straining against his pants, vague memories of dreams filled with skin and touch and blood fading slowly from his mind.

Reid looks at him. His eyes are empty and he’s close, so close, close enough to touch and Morgan does, tracing the back of his palm down the ragged stubble on the other man’s cheek. Reid doesn’t twitch, just watches, and Morgan wonders if he’ll let him pull him close, hug him tight, hold him so he can’t fade back into the night and into danger.

“Reid,” he says, or begs, and his mind is spinning in circles, leaving him lost. Reid winces, eyes darting to the opening and back again, and he slides his palm up Morgan’s leg, knee, thigh, pressing the heel of his hand against the hard length tenting the front of his thick winter pants.

Morgan gasps. Arches into that wanting hand, feeling it tense against him and push down, fingers pressing down and curling.

_Still asleep,_ his mind whispers, almost a statement but also a question, because Reid’s mouth has slipped open, and in the white-harsh light of the flashlight his cheeks are pink and his mouth is pinker and Morgan’s never wanted to fuck that mouth before but now it’s all he can imagine…

_Stop,_ his brain says and he lunges back, his skull smacking the rock-face. Reid doesn’t even jump and that’s wrong; the guy is normally hyped up on caffeine and edgy as a thoroughbred, but now he barely blinks.

_Don’t,_ says his brain once more, but Reid kneels on either side of his legs, he’s hard too, and Morgan _wants_ with a fierceness that’s breathtaking.

“This isn’t you,” he tries to say five times and gets out on the sixth, his tongue clumsy as Reid bows, his hair curtaining in front of his eyes in dirty clumps, his body warm and solid and real against Morgan’s legs. Reid presses his mouth, the mouth that only now Morgan can’t stop thinking about, against his crotch, mouthing at the material, his breath hot and wet and leaving a damp patch on his pants that Morgan strains against. “Reid, _Spencer._ Stop. Don’t.”

Reid stops and shrinks back, cowering almost wolf-like on his legs, like Clooney when Morgan shouts at him, and it makes Morgan sick to see. His eyes dart to the door, back to Morgan, and Reid’s terrified and empty all at once. He puts his hand to his mouth, almost like he’s going to be sick, but just as quickly drops it down to press against his shoulder, through the collar of his torn shirt. Reid’s just wearing a shirt and pants, nothing but a shirt and pants, and he must be freezing, but Morgan realizes now that he’s forgotten the cold and wonders if Reid has, too.

“I don’t want this,” Morgan lies, his cock throbbing in time with his heartbeat, and Reid nods and slides off of him, reaching down to press the hand that had covered his mouth against Morgan’s ankle, gripping it tight.

For a moment it’s comforting, then it brings pain, and his nails catch, bite; Morgan almost shouts with the _need_ it brings in a rush, and he almost comes right then and there, holy fuckfuck _fuck Spencer fuck._

“You will,” Reid says miserably, letting go and showing Morgan the hand that gleams slickly with blood, both of their blood. “I’m sorry.”

And then he’s a wolf again and then he’s gone.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t help.

The flashlight lays abandoned, his gun too, and Morgan couldn’t care less because he’s coming again, spilling onto his palm and the sand, and it doesn’t help, nothing helps. He’s still hard and pulsing and wanting and he stares helplessly at his dick and tries to think of anything that will bring him to some sort of end. Some sort of end to this ceaseless, consuming _need_.

He thinks of Spencer and his mouth: that mouth around him, against him, moaning prettily as he swallows, come on his lips, just a hint. He’d look up and smile crookedly, make a joke, some stupid fact maybe, and _fuckplease. Please please please._

“Spencer,” he moans as his body shudders into another false-start, leaving him trembling on the brink. His mind shifts to imagining the other man naked, flushed, under him, panting as Morgan moves inside him. He’s never been into men, never, but he knows if Spencer comes back he won’t say no, he can’t, not when it feels so right, the only thing he can think about, his body and mind focused on it.

He closes his eyes for a second, and, when he opens them, Reid is there and Morgan is lost.

He blinks and the hand stroking him isn’t his anymore and his fingers are biting into slim hips, pulling them close.

He closes his eyes again to try and catch his breath.

“What did you do to me?” he asks, unfairly maybe, because Reid’s back is against his chest now and his head is tilted around just enough that if Morgan leans forward, he can brush his lips against the corner of his mouth and taste the misery that’s painted there. He amends his statement in that moment of clarity. “Fuck, man, what did they do to _us_?”

Reid shrugs, almost uncaringly, and Morgan feels a surge of heat travel down his body in a lightning-fast bolt as the movement brings the slender man’s bare leg to brush against the hard cock that Morgan is pressing between the back of his thighs.

If he could, he almost softens with shock. “I’m not fucking you,” he promises Reid, grabbing that promise and clinging onto it with everything he has. “No shitting way. Not happening.”

He holds him close anyway, not letting him go, and he can’t tell if he’s hugging him, restraining him, or a bit of both. Reid isn’t fighting either way.

“It’s fine, Derek,” Reid says, and for a second, he sounds like himself. “She won’t let either of us leave, you know.” He smiles and it’s not his smile, not really, and this time Morgan does lean forward and kiss him. Reid turns so their lips can meet properly, hot breath panting, choking back a moan that Morgan swallows.

They’re still kissing when the heat returns.

 

* * *

 

Opening his eyes again and he’s coming, finally, fucking _finally_ and this time it’s everything he’s needed and he cries out with the pleasure of it. There’s a hot warmth on his hand, a liquid heat, and he hums happily when he realizes his mate is coming too.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into hair that’s matted to his partner’s neck with sweat and dirt and something else, something that tastes salty and wet when he tastes that skin, delicious and maddening, and he bites once gently just because he can. “I’m sorry,” he says again, and doesn’t really know why.

_“Mine,”_ someone else says smugly, a woman, and Reid lifts his head. Morgan feels his desire at the woman’s voice. It changes him. He turns from _Reid_ in Morgan’s arms to a stranger, an empty stranger.

He frowns. It doesn’t feel right.

The woman is noxious. She’s wrong. When Reid goes to her, Morgan follows.

But he keeps his distance.


	13. Reid – The Things We Lost in the Fire

The women smell familiar. Reid watches them carefully though the shifting leaves of the bush in front of him as the blonde one seeks something the dark-haired one can’t give her. There’s something else in their scent. His mind is clearing, sharpening, adjusting and becoming familiar again slowly, his wanted control lingering just out of reach behind a cloying veil of something that presses him away from himself.

_“It’s her,”_ the young wolf tells him, leaning against his side. _“She’s stopping you.”_

_He lies,_ Reid’s mind chants, so he ignores him.

A man watches the woods, his back to the women. The pack circles, silent. The man is unfamiliar. Reid feels his muzzle twitching back, exposing powerful canines. _Stranger._

_“Town human,”_ one of the pack sings. _“Don’t touch him. Not allowed.”_ The call is echoed in the wolves around them. _Not allowed, not allowed._

The pack moves forward. Reid waits. When the time is right, he shows himself. The blonde woman comes to him; she knows what he can offer. The dark haired woman watches helplessly. Something hurts in his chest at the sight of her.

She smells familiar.

_(home)_

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t like being human. It wobbles, the world dulls. He can’t hear the pack as easily. He can’t hear _her_ as easily, and it’s like having his air cut off. He needs her like he needs to breath and he can’t bear it. If there was a time before knowing her, he doesn’t care for it.

He leads the blonde woman towards his (leaderlover _captor_ ) and ignores her whimper when she stumbles. He does flinch though, as though his paws were the ones that slipped.

His woman appears and bounds around them and his head spins with happiness. He leaps with her, clumsy still but so much more powerful like this. The woman stares, her eyes wide with fear and hunger and longing for what they can offer. The air is ice and it sets the tree to gleaming blue with frost, their paws kicking up snow and the fog from their breath misting the air. The cold sharpens scents, all the scents, uncountable, unknowable, and he could try forever and only learn half of what his senses offer. He intends to try because there is knowledge here, and he wants it.

The night is beautiful, like this, the forest home.

_“Hurry up with her,”_ his woman says, nuzzling him and pressing her muzzle to his chest. He licks her ears, the silky fur slipping under his tongue, and she laughs as he breathes her scent in, learning it. He can’t lose her this way. _“We’ve lost too many tonight as it is. You, my love, came with a terrible cost.”_

That’s true. Reid had felt them, the ones that died. Not as painfully as the others, the wolves who’d known this pack before he did. But he’d felt them. He mourns them too.

_Okay,_ he thinks dreamily, but then he’s human and the dreamlike beauty shatters like glass and the cold is dangerous and edged with fear again.

“Spence,” JJ says, and he _knows her._ “Spence, oh, _Spence._ ”

She stumbles into his arms and he holds her close and counts her heartbeats as he remembers how to talk. The mist in his mind lifts a little. “Jayge,” he murmurs into her hair, closing his eyes and pulling her into a tight embrace, the kind that says more than words how much someone cares. “I’m here. It’s okay. Shh. I’m here.”

_Hurry up,_ snaps a voice, and he hears cruelty at first but it vanishes like it never was (she’s hiding it, idiot, just listen) and the mist is back. _Change her and she won’t suffer._

His mouth is open. Scenting, despite not having the body equipped for it right now. Wearing the wrong skin. Nevertheless, he can smell her pain and fear and worry and almost overwhelming, blood and hunger. Slipping out of her hold, he kneels in front of her. There’s a bite on her leg and he can smell the wolf that left it there, wrinkling his nose in distaste at the idea of the brute touching her (i’ll keep you safe, i promise).

_She’s blooded already,_ the woman says impatiently, wandering away. Bored with the proceedings. Part of him wants to leave the blonde and chase her, part of him is glad (this is already fucked, don’t make it worse with her watching). _Just finish it. Do it. It’s not as fun if I have to._ She’s pushing her will on him, his shoulders crumpling with the weight of what she wants him to do.

He’s not sure if he’s strong enough to fight that will.

JJ’s pants are already undone and she gasps with something almost filthy in her tone when he tucks a finger through the waistband and uncertainly tugs downwards, knocking his hand out the way and finishing the job herself, stepping neatly out of them and leaving them pooled on the ground next to her bare feet (when did she lose her shoes? she might hurt herself. help her). Pressing his mouth against the front of her neat underwear, he can taste her in the thin cotton, the material already damp and cold in the bitter air. Slipping down, he rubs his nose gently against her, and she cards her fingers through his hair and moans, rocking into his face.

“Please,” she whimpers, and he can smell her getting wetter, hotter, needier, slicker against his tongue as he tastes the salty cotton. She smells like Emily as well, and his cock is twitching, hardening uncomfortably in his pants.

_I can’t do this,_ he thinks suddenly, inhaling sharply and realizing that if he doesn’t fight this, if he doesn’t stop himself from slipping into the heat and madness he can feel pressing in on him, he’s never going to regain what they’ll lose. He turns his head, bringing his mouth to his hand and feeling his canines sharpen just enough to tear raggedly against his palm.

He presses his palm to her leg. To the bite.

_Maybe I don’t have to,_ he thinks as she moans, even though he’s not touching her, her fingers biting into his scalp. _Maybe if I just…_

One of her hands drops from his hair, dragging her underwear down, not even off, hanging awkwardly around her knees. She rubs herself. Slips those clever, gentle fingers deep inside herself. Slides them out, and he’s staring at her, watching those fingers work. And again. And again, with a soft wet noise that has him palming himself through his pants in rhythm with her hand. She uses him to keep her feet as their blood mingles and she loses herself.

He feels a jolt of something hot and needy in his gut and he can feel himself unravelling through the burning point of contact between his palm and her leg. He opens his mouth in shock and that’s a mistake because he can _tastesmellknow_ everything about her in that moment. Those fingers slip, sliding out and trailing slowly against her curls. He leans closer. He could lean closer yet and add his tongue to those fingers. Press it flat against her clit and let her rock against him. He could make her come, make her gasp. It would be right. He looks up and her face is flushed, her eyes glazed, and she wants him to.

She’d be happy if he did and he loves making her happy, he always has.

He opens his mouth to say something and instead leans forward and tastes that tantalizing wetness, just a taste, feeling his tongue slipping through the neat curls to lap at her clit. She keens almost, her fingers sliding out and he catches them with his mouth before she can return them to his hair, sampling the tang of her essence. He was right. This is what he should have done.

It’s too much and not enough and she’s talking to him but he can’t hear through the blood thundering in his ears as he lets go of her fingers, feeling her trail them across his ear almost in a caress, and returns his mouth and his tongue to the core of her. He almost chokes once when her hips buck and his tongue slips inside her, hot and wet and painfully delicious, but he breathes through his nose and rides the movement, feeling his hand clench around her leg.

She comes once, almost shaking apart, and he presses his mouth to her clit and uses the hand that was gripping her leg to slide two fingers inside her just so he can feel her muscles clenching around him. He doesn’t relent, keeps fucking her with those fingers, until she’s buckled on his shoulders and still shaking and his cock is aching to be inside her and she’s begging for it, absolutely begging, with her voice and her hands and…

_Spence,_ she moans in his mind and it brings a rush of everything she’s feeling and she’s with him, she’s with him, the blood and the heat changing her and bringing them together. Love and desire and lust and love and love and…

_It’s okay,_ she says a moment later, or maybe an age, and she’s on her knees and he is too and they’re wrapped around each other. He listens to her voice even as his mind drifts and hers is clear, sharp, focused in a way he envies. _I can hear her too. It’s okay. I’m okay with this, you’re not hurting me, you’re not hurting me._

He releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and something in his mind stops fighting.

_It’s okay. I’m here for you._

She’s beautiful and he doesn’t deserve everything she gives him.

But she gives it to him anyway.

 

* * *

 

She’s stunning as a wolf, creamy-gold in the moonlight, and he glories in that.

_“Look, look!”_ he says at first, spinning in front of her on his paws again, and he can feel her wonder even through the disorientation the change brings. _“Everything is so alive! Werewolves, Jayge, can you believe it?”_

Then the woman comes back and she hates her. He can’t understand why. How could anyone hate anything so lovely?

But she does and she turns on him, snarling and biting and _pressing_ and the fog comes back and reminds him that she’s the one he loves.

_White is common anyway,_ he thinks dully, and turns his back on JJ to run with their leader. He wonders how he could have ever found her beautiful.

JJ tries to keep up, but he doesn’t let her.

He’s faster than she is.

 

* * *

 

She makes him change Morgan and Reid hates it and loves it in equal measures.

Morgan is a thickset wolf, one of the biggest there, and as soon as it’s done, the woman chases him away.

_“I don’t like them,”_ she tells Reid angrily, and (why’d you make me change them then?) herds him away from the two wolves. Morgan stands between JJ and the woman and he bristles dangerously. _“Stop listening to them.”_

_“Okay,”_ Reid assures her because she sounds upset and he can’t bear it.

But it proves impossible.

 

* * *

 

_“Your name is Spencer William Reid. You wear odd socks and your birthday is in October. JJ made you wear a cake hat when you turned twenty-four, remember? Remember magic? You used to do magic for us, proper magic, not this werewolf bullshit.”_

He veers away, ignoring the voice, and the white wolf bounds in front. _“Henry,”_ she says firmly, blue eyes flashing. _“My son, Henry. You love him. He loves you. We’re going home to him.”_

_“I am home,”_ Reid snaps, and runs past her.

But no matter how hard he runs, they don’t relent.

_“Your mother is Diana Reid.”_

_“Emily has a cat named Sergio.”_

_“You used to play chess with Gideon, before he went away. Remember Gideon?”_

The dark brown one nips at his side. _“Aaron Hotchner,”_ he says, and Reid yelps (remembers) because that hurts, he’s hurt, and the other wolves stop and look at them, disinterestedly curious. They’re so much quieter than these two, so much emptier, and Reid wishes they were quiet too because they’re _hurting me, stop._ _“Aaron Hotchner. He’s our boss. You know him. You’re with him, man. You’re with him. And Jack, what about Jack?”_

Someone bumps his side and when he looks, the woman is there and he’s thankful. _“Mine,”_ she promises quietly, and he’s giddy with it. She threatens the two and they back away. Finally.

(you don’t actually want them to stop though, do you?)

_“What’s wrong with him?”_ the white one howls as he walks away from them and they don’t follow. _“Why is he so empty? I can’t feel him!”_

_“You’re a dead wolf,”_ the brown one snarls, and Reid wonders who he’s talking to. _“Let him go!”_

Eventually their voices fade to a whisper, and it’s much better that way.

Much better.

 

* * *

 

They’re hunting and their prey is elusive. The woman is there. She studies their intended victim. Reid waits for her instruction.

The man shouts abuse at them. Reid ignores him. He can smell him, even from far below; he’s cold and old and injured.

Hardly worth bringing into the pack. He’ll weaken them.

_“He’ll weaken the mutt pack more if he’s ours,”_ the woman explains, and there’s two low snarls from the forest edge that they both ignore. Unimportant. _“Just wait. He’ll come down to us eventually. They all come to us in the end.”_

So he waits.


	14. JJ – Safe and Sound

It’s surprisingly easy to adjust to knowing Spencer’s mind. At least, it is for all of five minutes, when her brain kicks back into gear and the heat and confusion fades and she’s allowed, for five precious minutes, to realize that this is… well, it’s exactly what Spence calls it.

It’s alive.

The forest sings and now she has the ears to hear it. The nose to scent the life in the earth and the air around her. The widespread paws that carry her across the snow and the slush and pick up the minutest vibrations through the ground from animals moving nearby with hardly a care for the two carousing wolves. And _Spence_. He’s himself in a way he wasn’t when he was inside her and even as she adjusts to the world, the memory of their coupling is fading into a distant recollection. She tries to cling to it, because it wasn’t something she’d ever wanted, it was nothing she’d have taken from him if they’d had a choice, but it _had_ happened. It was real and it happened and she doesn’t want to forget it.

And then the five minutes are over and the woman appears, a wolf that sneers and pushes at her through the tenuous link and brings JJ onto her belly on the cold-wet forest floor.

_“Mine,”_ she sneers, and JJ feels her fierce regard switch to Spencer and he just… dwindles. Like the sun suddenly obscured by a cloud, he’s gone and it leaves her cold. The light leaves his eyes and turns them empty, and he supplicates himself to the new wolf and whines happily, tail waving.

_“What are you doing to him?”_ JJ asks in horror.

The wolf-woman turns and looks at her, confused. This close she stinks of Reid, and not in a good way. She smells of his fear and his sweat and it’s coated in her fur and makes JJ sick to her stomach. _“Why are you so loud?’_ the woman snaps, and pushes more.

JJ feels her mind buckle under that pressure. _Obey me._ The other wolves stare at them. JJ can’t feel them, not a whisper.

JJ can’t fight it.

Not alone.

She submits.

 

* * *

 

Even without being consciously aware of her actions, she follows him closely. She watches it. She knows, on some level, that she’ll always know him. Even in this unfamiliar form, his tawny fur mixing smoothly into the white of his chest and belly, she knows she’ll always be able to know him. There’s a flash of her mind clearing when she raises her head from where she’s lapping at an icy meltwater stream, and he’s standing next to him with his too-large ears pricked forward intently. She almost laughs when he lifts a paw from the mud curiously, and she notes that it’s singularly coloured white against his other three tan.

Even as a wolf, he’s still wearing odd socks. That delights her, just as much as it saddens her.

When she wakes up again, the fog lifting, she’s running with his tawny flanks visible a wolf’s length in front of her and there’s a small, frightened half-grown pup by her side.

_“Hello,”_ she sends warily, feeling him jolt.

_“You’re… you!”_ the kid sends back, and his voice is so painfully young she wants to lead him away to safety right then and there. _“Even more than he is. How are you so free?”_

_“I don’t know,”_ JJ replies honestly, because now he’s pointed it out she can feel how goddamn alone they are despite being surrounded by other wolves. They’re two minds in a sea of emptiness, and it’s so wrong it makes her queasy. _“Can we leave? Can we run?”_

The pup looks to her, and then his gaze turns back to Reid. _“Only if you leave him,”_ he says finally, tail tucking against his leg and rounded ears uncertain. _“She’s holding him too tightly. He’ll never leave her. And I won’t go. My brother is here… sometimes, I think he can hear me. I have to keep trying.”_

Suddenly, they’re surrounded by wolves that tower over them. JJ doesn’t cower. She stares each of the strangers down. The kid trembles under her. The woman appears, Reid at her side. He doesn’t look twice at them. _“I don’t trust you,”_ the woman says, and there’s cruelty and a sick sense of forcefulness in her voice, _“so you’re going to stay here like a good like bitch, while we go get your friend.”_

JJ doesn’t argue. If it comes to a brawl, she doesn’t know how to work this unfamiliar new body. Not consciously. She’ll lose. And if she loses, she’ll never see Will or Henry again. Thinking of Will makes her heart ache and the boy whine unhappily, so she stops, just for now. The woman and Reid vanish. The night deepens. When they return, Morgan limps behind them as a wolf with a coat that gleams a chestnut so dark it’s almost black, and she almost screams in horror at the wavering weakness of his mind.

_“Not you too,”_ she howls, and the noise is unfamiliar from her muzzle. The boy joins in, the sound mournful. They howl alone. _“Derek, please. We need you. We need to find the others. I can’t do this alone!”_

Morgan shakes himself and looks at her and the darkness in his eyes clears. _“JJ?”_ he whispers, and she throws herself at him almost.

Not alone.

 

* * *

 

_“What the hell is wrong with him?”_ Morgan asks miserably as they try and try and fail to reach Reid. _“It’s like he can’t even hear us.”_

_“None of them can, not really,”_ the boy tells them, itching at his neck with a hind leg. The wolves stir, their blood up. JJ can hear the whisper of _a hunt, a hunt_ , travelling through them, but very little else of sense. _“They’re on a different wavelength from us, sorta. She stops them from hearing anything but what she wants them to. She turned them all, you know. Except… me. And you guys.”_

JJ looks at Morgan. He’s angry and frightened and curious all at once. _“Do you think that’s it?”_ he muses, padding in a quick circle with his shoulders hunched. _“Maybe she fucked up. Maybe because Reid turned us…”_

_“She forced him,”_ JJ says quickly, defending him.

_“Yeah. Yeah she did. And I think that was her mistake.”_ Morgan bares his teeth in an almost human grin, savage in its inhumanity. _“We can stop her. Before she goes after Emily, or Hotch or… Rossi. Where’s Rossi? He was with you.”_

JJ can’t remember. She can’t. Her last clear memory is leaving the hospital. She cranes her head to try and spot Reid’s light tan amongst the bevy of grey and brown milling about. There’s about, from her count, sixteen wolves, not counting her team or the boy. Or the woman. _“I don’t know, but he’s smart and tough. He’ll have gotten away from them; I know he would. How do we help Reid?”_

Morgan shrugs. _“I don’t know yet. But we will.”_

 

* * *

 

He didn’t get away from them. He didn’t get away at all.

He slips from the tree and his leg buckles under him. JJ throws herself down so his weight lands on her instead of the icy ground, feeling the air forced from his chest at the impact. His breath rasps. One look at the oddness to his leg and she knows it’s broken.

“Hey, JJ,” he murmurs, sitting up and reaching a shaking hand towards her, the nails a deep blue against the white of his fingers. His other hand is gloved. He must have lost it on the way down the tree. “This is an interesting complication to our case, I must say.” He’s stammering around chattering teeth and one look at his face tells her everything that happens next.

_“He’s in a bad way,”_ Morgan says, and he’s pacing around and inching closer to their older colleague’s back, pressing against him and ignoring the way Rossi jumps and flinches away from him, eyes locked on his jaws. _“Christ, he’s fucking frozen. We gotta get him to a medic ASAP.”_

The woman told them to bite him and JJ knows she can fight that command. She has no hold over them, not while they have each other. But Reid circles them and his muzzle is pulled back in a snarl, and she knows he’s beyond fighting.

She also knows the cold will kill Dave faster than the wolves will.

She inches onto her colleague, her _friend’s_ lap, slowly. Tentatively. It feels ridiculous, like she’s some kind of lapdog, but he relaxes ever so slightly as her warmth covers him, the shivering receding slightly. Not enough. The ground under him still chills him more than they can warm him. He’s leaning with Morgan at his back and there’s a sleepiness to his eyes that he won’t wake up from if he gives in to it.

“Not gonna lie, this is probably the top third weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me,” he slurs, and his eyes flicker almost shut. There’s pain in his voice and his scent, and her heart feels like it’s being crushed in her chest. She looks at Morgan, almost as though seeking permission. A hand strokes her back, her spine, fingers carding clumsily through her fur, and it’s oddly… soothing.

He can’t die here. None of them are dying here. Morgan nods.

She turns her head and nudges that hand, whines gently. She feels his heart rate kick up, fear rushing through him and turning his scent tart. He offers her his hand anyway, ignoring the trembling. That’s not what she wants. If she bites his hand, he won’t be able to fire a gun.

His wrist is cool to the touch when she takes it in her mouth and breaks the skin with her teeth, as carefully as possibly. When he pulls it back, there’s a delicate beading of blood along the line where her fangs rested. She wonders if it’s enough. She can’t bring herself to hurt him more.

_“At least he won’t be cold anymore,”_ Morgan says glumly. _“Man, Hotch is not going to be happy with any of this.”_

He closes his eyes and together, with Reid pacing behind them, they wait.

 

* * *

 

She wakes slowly and becomes aware of a softer, gentler version of the burning heat that had gripped her beginning to pool in her brain and her groin, leaving a warm persuasiveness to both that she almost melts into. Her eyes are still closed, shifting gently to encourage that warmth, and she feels it purring back at her from another part of her mind.

_“JJ,”_ Morgan croons from somewhere, and there’s a dazed kind of desire to his mental voice that has her humming in satisfaction in the back of her throat. _“JJ, Jesus, I can feel that. I can feel you.”_

Rossi moves slightly under her, a harsh huff leaving his mouth that has her opening her eyes in worry to examine him judiciously. He’s staring at her, his pupils blown wide and face flushed, and it’s then she becomes aware of the hard length pressing against her belly and the sharp bleach-salt smell of come.

“I changed my mind,” he almost squeaks, which is remarkable because she’s never seen the man look quite this unnerved. “This is alarming. I do not like this. You’re all wolf-y and I… _fuck_.” He slides his hand down to cup it between his crotch and her, pushing her gently off his legs with his other hand. She goes, reluctantly.

_“Probably lose the fur, Jayge,”_ Morgan says suddenly, and there’s an odd moment where she thinks, _am I really going to fuck my boss in front of my colleague?_ _“You know. There are many things I can handle. He can probably handle more. You being a wolf is almost certainly not one of those things—and if it is, I don’t want to know about it.”_

_“I think the bite affects us both,”_ she says, and her eyes are locked on his hand, what lies underneath, and she whines and inches forward again, nostrils flaring. _“I’m affected, too. Just not as… not as…”_

She trails off as Rossi closes his eyes and moves his hand, rocking up into it. For a second, his hand moves, and there’s a visible shape pressing against the material that she wants to feel, to know, and a dark patch around it that’s delicious smelling.

_“Human, JJ. Turn human. You’re freaking him out.”_ Morgan keeps talking but JJ inches forward, belly to the ground, nose reaching. Rossi’s hand almost beckons. She wonders if she’ll be able to taste traces of his come on his hand, the one that presses almost painfully down as he seeks any kind of release from the hunger her teeth have given him. She reaches and her tongue flickers out. His fingers are salty and he shudders at her touch. A second touch, this time with her nose, and he moves his hand, uncertain, hovering over her muzzle like he’s not sure if he wants to pat her or push her. She drops her muzzle, noses at that stiffness, and Rossi chokes back a noise that sets the fur on the back of her neck on end.

When she laps at that patch, it tastes as sharp and as clean as she’d expected. He’d come while she was dozing, frozen underneath her as her bite changed him and aroused him until he’d pushed himself over the edge at the mere thought of what they could do. She rubs it again, and this time he does push her away, leaning back hard against Morgan. She grips his wrist gently, biting down again, slightly harder this time, and his face slackens with shock and desire, his heart rate hammering.

She shifts. She’s human and his blood is copper and fire against her lips.

“Dave,” she calls him, because his eyes are closed like he’s not sure, and he’s gone quiet. The man who never lets anyone else have the last word, and he’s resolutely silent right now. It should be ridiculous, this situation, because she’s in her shirt and ruined underwear, her pants somewhere in the goddamn woods, and she’s on her boss’ lap with his cock up against her and a wolf against his back averting his gaze politely even as his own pupils blow wide with their shared arousal.

She nips at her own wrist, feeling the skin pinch and slice under teeth that lengthen at a thought. Pressing their wrists together, she feels the kick-pull that she’d felt with Spencer, as though she’s being pulled into his body, becoming a part of him, longing for that joining. As it kicks in, she lowers herself with her legs kneeling flat on either side of Dave’s thighs and presses her crotch to his, hissing as the ice-cold bite of her now-completely goddam sodden underwear push up clammily against her skin.

Her mouth finds his throat, feeling the thrum of his pulse under her lips and she nuzzles, licks, kisses along his collarbone, feeling every attention she pays to him through the twitching of his cock. His face is scratchy, not at all like Spence’s, only a little like Will’s, and he tastes of bitter cologne that burns her mouth slightly. When she moves up, finding his slack mouth and slipping her tongue along his lower lip, biting down gently onto it and feeling his breath shudder, she leaves the taste of that cologne on his lips. Two hands grip her hips, guiding her in a slow rocking motion against him, and when she looks at him, his focus is on her and solely on her.

She whines and presses _hard_ down onto him, aware of his need and his desire and vividly aware of an aching emptiness between her legs that only he can fill, and an equally empty space in her mind where he’ll join them. _Packpackpack_ , she chants, and feels a faint agreement from Morgan, and an even fainter one from Reid.

He slows her, mouth twitching. “Whoa there,” he says, and one of his hands reaches up to cup her chin and pull her mouth to his. “Whoa there. Come here. Not like that. We’re not doing this like that. That’s it… come on, Jennifer.” He’s coaxing despite the heat that makes his eyes and skin burn, and she obeys that coaxing. They kiss, slowly, slowly, learning each other’s movements and bodies, hands exploring. All the time their hips shifting slowly against each other, a gentle rocking that serves to keep her dancing on the edge of too much.

They kiss slowly until his breath hitches, just once, and he twitches up towards her, his iron-clad control slipping for a moment, and she sees the wolf she’s sharing with him begin to stir in his eyes. They kiss slowly until that moment, and in that moment the kiss turns wet and hungry and gasping, and his hips stutter into her once, twice. She’s never had a hair-trigger before, but now she can feel her muscles fluttering, feel how her need has soaked through her own underwear, leaving his crotch just as wet and sticky, feeling the flush of heat to her chest and face as she dances on the edge.

Rossi pulls back and examines her carefully, his expression somehow both sharp and wrecked. He slips his hand up her shirt and presses it to her heart, cupping her breast, and his palm is warm and firm. “Jennifer,” he whispers like the name is holy to him. “I can feel that…” His hand travels down her belly again, skin twitching against his touch, and he trails his fingers along the elastic of her underwear. “You about to come… I can feel that.” He arches to move the hand teasing at her crotch, and his eyes are locked on her face. His other hand grabs one of hers, clinging tightly with their fingers threaded together. She can’t think to answer him. He slips those agile, gentle fingers inside her underwear and all he does is lay them along her, within her, and he says just as calmly, “Now. Come now, so I can feel you,” and she does with a soft cry. His hips buck once and seeing his mouth slip open in hungry delight as he murmurs, “Beautiful, fuck. You’re beautiful,” and it’s everything like Reid was, except completely different.

_“You are,”_ Morgan agrees from far away, and when she looks at him his eyes are still closed and he’s lost in her climax and she wonders if it will always be like this.

“Your turn,” JJ says softly to Dave, and it’s the work of a second for the two of them to fumble his fly down, pull him free, struggle for a second with him lifting his ass high enough to get his pants down. JJ growls with displeasure at the time it’s taking, watching the silky-smooth skin of his cock and the promise of pre-cum on the tip, and then she takes things into her own hands while he’s not paying attention and simply sinks herself down on top of it until their hips are grinding together and she’s never been fuller.

“Jesus-fuck!” Rossi gasps and jerks upright. The pain is good as he slams up into her but she yelps anyway, and his apologies are jumbled and breathless. Then he does it again, and this time it’s on purpose and the pain is delicious and his cursing this time isn’t verbal. _Fuckfuckfuck_ , he’s thinking and she can feel his mind unravelling as his focus shatters and reforms entirely on her tightening around him.

He sits upright, wrapping his arms around her so tightly all she can do is ineffectively twitch her hips against him, but it’s comforting to be held this closely, this securely, like he can’t bear to be without her. _My turn,_ he thinks and out loud he says, “Jennifer,” but she silences his words with her mouth on his and they’re still kissing when he shudders and begins to pulse inside her, his moan turning into a harsh gasp as the change kicks in and his eyes turn wolf-like. JJ tumbles with his mind and pulls him close, not letting his veer towards the emptiness of the other wolves, and she feels the mental presence of Morgan there alongside them. A team still.

A brush against her consciousness, a familiar feel. She recognises Spence, but when she reaches for him, he slips away.

Dave is softening inside her, his body burning with the wolf within, and she doesn’t regret this.

He’s alive. That’s all that matters.

 

* * *

 

Rossi’s gait is messed up, one hind leg lifted high and the paw dangling grossly. He licks at it, gingerly pulling back when Morgan huffs. _“Well?”_ Rossi asks grumpily, shaking out his slate-grey fur and eyeing them all. _“What now?”_ He still smells shocked, pained, and JJ wonders how well he’s actually dealing with all… this.

How well any of them are dealing with it, really.

Morgan keeps snarling at nothing and jumping at shadows, she can’t think of home without her heart trying to rip out of her chest, there’s a glazed kind of shock evident in Rossi’s eyes and Spence…

Morgan takes control and JJ’s glad, because she knows what comes next and she can’t bear it. _“We need to find Prentiss and Hotch,”_ he says firmly, and growls warningly at another wolf that veers too close to their bunched-up group. _“She’s going to realize we’re getting stronger instead of weaker, and I don’t think she’ll keep us around after that.”_

_“Spence…”_ JJ murmurs, but he’s gone again. Out of sight and out of reach.

_“We’ll come back for him,”_ Morgan promises, and she nods. She’ll hold him to that promise. _“We’ll try the cabin. Get some food and water into Dave. Maybe the town wolves… maybe they can tell us what the hell is going on here.”_

They leave as snow begins to fall in earnest, covering their tracks. No wolf seems to notice, nor care, about their departure.

_We’ll come back,_ JJ thinks desperately, hoping that some part of Spence is listening. _Just wait here. We’ll be back._

Howls echo after them from up the valley. If any sound familiar, she doesn’t notice.


	15. Emily – Welcome to the Black Parade

Hotch is ragged. His eyes are sunken in and red-rimmed. Emily can see the scars from the terrible night they’ve all suffered through drawn openly across his face for everyone to see. But he’s hasn’t been infected.

He might be the last of them that isn’t.

“I hate this place,” Emily says, peering out of the cave opening into the white that’s all that’s left of the weak afternoon. Night soon. Their third. Garcia must be going out of her mind with worry by now… “When we’re done here, we’re going somewhere nice. Somewhere sunny and hot and with no winter.” _When we’re done here. If._ _If we’re done here._

They’re all thinking it.

Hotch doesn’t answer. Alex pauses and looks at him, his mouth turning downward. Kara is leaning against the wall, tapping the radio against the rock thoughtfully. Two wolves sit like sentries at the doorway. Emily can’t help but watch them back, fear clawing at her throat. Hotch swears they’re trustworthy. She doesn’t give a damn how housetrained he says they are; she’s _done_ with anything canine.

“How long are we going to sit here on our asses?” Emily tries again, joining Alex in pacing the tight space. She has to step over Hotch’s legs to make a complete circuit, and a muscle twitches under his eye every time she does so. Good. If she gets on his nerves, maybe he’ll shake himself out of this funk he’s sunk into.

“You’re not going out there,” Hotch says firmly. “You’ve bit bitten. It’s snowing. We’re waiting them out.”

“We’re… waiting them out…” Emily repeats slowly, staring at him again. “This is a good idea, yes. One of your best. Go you.”

“Do you have a better one?” Kara says, still tapping the damn radio. _Tap tap tap._ “I’ve lived here three years and I still have no idea what the fuck is going on right now. Wolves have never fought wolves, not ever. This is _insane._ They’ve gone mad.” _Tap tap tap_ goes the radio. Emily wants to smack it out her hand. Okay, maybe she’s getting a little stir-crazy, but at least the effects of the bite are fading. She’s only thought about sex what… three times in the last hour. That’s a nice change. A very nice change considering she’s stuck in a cave with her boss and there’s no way in hell she—

“Hotch,” she says suddenly, mind ticking. She stares at the wolves, the tap of the radio the only sound aside from the low crackle of the fire. “Why aren’t these guys crazy?”

Hotch looks at her and then at the wolves at the door, and he frowns. “I wasn’t aware any of the wolves were crazy,” he says, nudging a crumbling branch deeper into the guttering fires. “Just… intent upon claiming what they believe to be theirs. People don’t like to be shunned.” The look he gives Kara is almost intent. Her mouth wobbles, and she looks away.

Emily shakes her head and one of the wolves watches her from the corner of his eye, expression nervous. “JJ was out of it,” she says, thinking back carefully. “Reid too. And the other wolves, this woman’s pack, they’re following her without question. She’s controlling them. Otherwise Reid and JJ would be here by now, with us, wolf or no wolf.”

“Rossi and probably Morgan, too,” Hotch says, and he stands. His eyes are dark in the firelight, but there’s a spark back in them. Anger. “The missing hikers…”

“It has to do with how they’re turned, we think,” Kara says. She stops tapping the radio. “You get turned proper, like Shades’ wolves do it, you get your mind back when the change ends. You get turned like Charlotte does it… we don’t shun them for the hell of it, you know.”

“If you get turned by them, you’re lost.” Emily doesn’t know what made her say it, but she sees Kara shiver. “They ever fight her off? Come back to the town by their own behest?”

“No,” Alex and Kara say at the same time. Both look miserable.

“Once,” corrects one of the wolves, shifting in an instant and straightening. “Couple of years back. Married couple went hiking, husband got bit and turned. Wife got away—used a damn flare gun on one of them. Ballsy. When she finished being scared, she stole a rifle and went back up there and brought him home.”

“We had to keep him locked in a basement for almost a month before Charlotte let go of his mind enough for him to come back to himself.” Kara looks thoughtful. “I wouldn’t call that coming back on his own.”

“Charlotte didn’t let him go,” the wolf says, and he’s looking at Emily now and his eyes are endless. “That’s what you want me to tell you, isn’t it, agent? She didn’t let him go. But he didn’t get himself loose.”

“His wife,” Emily says. Hotch is frowning now like he knows where she’s leading with this.

“Asked to be turned three days before the month was up,” Alex says, talking over the wolf’s soft hiss. “Walked into that basement as soon as she knew her paws and didn’t come out until he was himself again. They work at a gas station just outta town now.”

“Fighting fire with fire,” Emily murmurs, and smiles. Hotch stares at her.

“No,” he says, and she doesn’t look away. “ _No_. Prentiss, I said no. We wait. That’s an order.”

She’s never been great at taking orders.

 

* * *

 

Hotch follows her. None of the others do. Alex looks like he wants to, but Kara grabs his arm and drags him back to shelter.

“You can’t do this,” Hotch shouts, his voice muffled by the wind and snow, dragging at her sleeve. “This is suicide!”

“So what, we wait up here until someone at home misses us and they send the fucking army up here to see who managed to off a whole team of feds?” She whirls on him and the snow around them flurries. He’s shivering. She’s not. The bite still protects her from that, at least. “They’ll come in shooting, Hotch. Guns blazing and everything this community has worked for, gone in an instant. And if we’re still human? Congrats to us, we live. Our team doesn’t. They’ll mow them down with the rest and there’s nothing we’ll be able to do to stop them.”

Both his hands are on her arms now and she can’t tell if he means to be digging his fingers in so tightly that she’ll bruise for sure, or if he just can’t tell how hard he’s gripping through the cold. “I’m not losing you, too” he says. The words are whipped away into the storm, but she still hears them. And she hears how close to breaking he is, despite how calm he looks. “If you want this, if you think you can… there are wolves with us. Town ones. Sane ones. Let them…”

“They can’t talk to Charlotte’s pack. They said it themselves, different wavelengths. If I want to get in the teams’ heads, it has to be their ‘pack’ that turns me.” Unspoken is the horrible certainty of who it will be. _Sorry, Spencer. But I’d do so much more to keep you safe than this._

“I’m coming too then. You’re not going alone.”

She’s already shaking her head. He’s been out here two minutes and he’s already turning blue. They’re not dressed for a blizzard, and it’s fast becoming one. “So you can freeze to death? Alex told me I’m like a beacon to Charlotte’s wolves; they want to finish what they started. They’ll find me before I freeze. You? No such luck.”

He pulls her into a hug, the second in twenty-four hours, and it’s still weird. Overt shows of emotion from Hotch are… disconcerting. His mouth is by her ear and his words are ice. “Fine,” he says, his tone dangerous. “But you come back here, understand, Prentiss? You promise me that as soon as it’s done, _straight away_ , you come back up here. Otherwise I will follow you into this forest until I can’t follow you anymore because I _will not lose you._ ”

“Why back here?” She’s arguing despite the burning that’s threatening her eyes because, fuck, this is almost a goodbye. Him hugging her like this, saying these things, it’s like he’s trying to chase away a nightmare. Like reassuring Jack that there are no monsters in the bed while sleeping with his gun close at hand just in case. “I need to get in their heads, drive Charlotte out.” _If I keep my own mind,_ she thinks, but doesn’t say.

He still hasn’t let go, but his next words are softer. And they cut her deeper than anything yet.

“I love him,” he says, and when she turns her head to look at him his eyes are closed and his lashes are frosted white against his cheeks. “I never told him that. We’ll tell him together.”

She knows what he’s not saying. She knows what he’s offering.

She accepts it.

 

* * *

 

The snow doesn’t give up and she really, really hopes she hasn’t just walked into a blizzard to her death. Although, she’s not cold and that would be weird, except she’s seen people turn into wolves today. By using sex. Nothing will ever surprise her ever again, of that she’s sure.

She takes a step and almost pitches forward as the snow abruptly gives out and she stumbles into an almost snow-free dip, smacking her head on the branch that shelters it. She has to duck to slip in, and the snow pressing against the foliage around her makes her feel like she needs to pop her ears. Looking back out, she can’t even see which way she came from.

This is ridiculous. Her pants are soaked and she might not be cold, but she can still appreciate how much it hurts to have material happily freezing to her skin. She’s wearing Hotch’s gloves because she ran out the damn cabin without grabbing hers, and now that she really wants an overly-touchy werewolf to come charging out of the darkness towards her, there’s not a peep.

She’s also starving. This has not been a good week.

“Oh, come on!” she bellows into the weather outside her branch-roof. “What—now that I’m here, you don’t want me?”

A branch rustles and she spins. The wolf almost falls on his ass as he jumps from the top of the banked snowdrift into the hollow, bringing with him a small avalanche of ice and snow. There’s a wary kind of predatory hunger to his eyes, and she backs away despite having been looking for exactly this.

Snow slips from the branch and lands on his head. He flicks his ears, once, twice, and then tosses his head back with an irritated huff. It’s a move she’s watched him do thousands of times, usually from across their desks. Usually to flick too-long hair out of his eyes as he puzzles over a report. Usually followed by a smile or a laugh.

And she recognises it immediately.

“You’re a scrawny thing as a wolf too,” she tells him glumly. This is going to _suck_. And it’s going to make the jet ride home intensely awkward. She’s already never going to be able to look JJ in the eye again, and she’s pretty sure all hope of staying professional with Hotch will be out the window if this goes to plan.

Reid inches forward, paws silent and eyes intent. She waits until he’s close before reaching a hand down and running it gently down his skull. He flinches, whines, and then looks at her like he knows her.

“You owe me for this one, kid,” she tells him sternly, and then she drops to her knees and drags him, stiff-legged and passively resisting, into a hug that rivals Hotch’s for awkwardness.

He jerks in her arms and suddenly he’s human with no apparent in between. “Emily,” he murmurs into her neckline, and presses close. “You came back.”

“Yeah, I did,” she says firmly. “And I always will. Now come on. We both know what comes next.”

It’s both nowhere near as bad as she’d expected, and somehow infinitely worse because of that.

 

* * *

 

She keeps herself locked in her mind. _My name is Emily Prentiss. I’m doing this for my team. I know myself. I know him. I promised Hotch I’d go back._

The exact moment he sinks into her, she’s aware of other voices joining hers, distant and faint, but still audible.

_Your name is Emily._

_Don’t let that go, Prentiss._

_We’re coming to you. Just hang on. Hold onto yourself._

_Don’t let Spence go._

“Can you hear them too?” she gasps into Reid’s mouth, him panting against her, and he nods brokenly. “Listen to them.”

“Not supposed to,” he says.

She laughs sharply as she answers. “Do it anyway. Say something. Anything—come on, you can never shut up any other time.”

She feels his lips move as though he’s smiling, but she’s scared to check in case he’s not. _Ohio is the only state to not share a letter with the word 'mackerel,’_ he sends, and laughs, and it’s a curiously free sound.

_Damnit, Pretty-boy. I’m gonna kick your ass when I see you next._ Morgan’s voice, and there’s a cautiousness to it that’s never been there before, but also relief.

In that moment, she’s pretty sure everything is going to be fine.

 

* * *

 

The change is sudden. One second Reid is slipping out of her and she’s stumbling upright and tugging her pants up with a grimace of distaste, feeling the mess they’ve made of her thighs chill in the frozen air—and later she’ll complain bitterly about the irony of creatures that fuck to pass on their weirdness living in the last place you’d ever want to take your pants off—and the next she’s falling forward onto her hands and crying out with the abrupt feeling of her bones being wrenched five inches to the left and taking her internal organs with them.

It hurts.

And then it doesn’t and she’s not on her hands at all, but paws. Reid is a wolf again and he takes a hesitant step towards her as her mind spins, slips, cracks ever so slightly. There’s a yawning emptiness that he promises and some dazed part of her mind wants to accept that offer.

He licks her muzzle. _“You adapt quickly,”_ he soothes, and he’s still himself right now. _“I kept running into trees. Four legs are… problematic. I never even really mastered two.”_

The emptiness beckons and she steps away. Her mind clears.

Hotch. She promised Hotch.

_“Come with me,”_ she says, shaking her fur out and tentatively testing how to walk in this unfamiliar new form, determinedly ignoring the distraction of the suddenly really loud world around them. She barely sinks into the snow like this, moving over it, and he zig-zags hesitantly after her. _“Aaron. I know where Aaron is. Come with me, Spencer. He’s so fucking worried about you, please come with me.”_

_“Aaron,”_ Reid parrots, and his eyes widen. _“Aaron! Is he hurt? Where is he? I… I didn’t think.”_

_“He’s clearer,”_ comes JJ’s voice from miles away, moving closer slowly. _“He’s clearer now. Shit, Em, you’re helping him. Keep doing that!”_

_“If not, drag him by his ears,”_ Rossi suggests, his tone wry. He sounds even further, voice wobbling like a badly tuned radio. Morgan is just as far when he speaks.

Emily turns to examine the world, the snow slowing and settling and revealing the night that has fallen, and something hits her on the side and sends her flying with a cry of shock. She thinks it’s Reid at first, playing maybe.

Then there are teeth at her throat and across her muzzle, and she knows it’s not. _“You bitch!”_ snarls the new wolf, all teeth and anger and a hot, forceful voice that makes Emily’s ears ache. _“He’s mine!”_

_“Like fuck he is,”_ Emily says coolly, and throws her off, stumbling up. The wolf is already out of reach by the time she finds her feet, lunging at Reid. She snaps at him, once, twice, trying to force him away. Emily sees blood on the side of his face and he yelps and cowers onto his belly in the snow. _“You can’t control me,”_ Emily snarls, bringing her attention back to her, and leaps. _“I bet you can’t even catch me.”_

Slashing jaws and a flurry of snow and Emily is away, racing across the drifts and running faster than she’s ever run before. The female wolf follows. Reid doesn’t. But that’s fine. There’s a part of her mind where her team are, and she can feel him there still.

She’ll be able to find him, no matter what.


	16. Hotch – Dangerous Man

Kara sees her first.

“Agent,” she says, green eyes wide, and when Hotch turns to the doorway, there’s a wolf standing there with fur as dark as her hair had been as a human. His heart skips a beat.

“Emily?” he asks, and the wolf nods slowly, stepping into the flickering ring of light left by the fire. There’s a low growl and the two wolves that had been laying by the door slip away into the woods where a third paces, hackles up and eyes locked on the newcomer. None of them seem inclined to stay. Hotch hopes they’re not going far; he has a distinct feeling that Charlotte probably isn’t taking Emily’s desertion of her pack with all too much grace.

The paramedic that Emily brought with her coughs and stands. “Not super sold on this idea,” he says, mouth twisting. “You know there’s no reset switch. She infects you, that’s it. You’re a wolf for good, with all that entails. Is your team worth that?”

“Yes,” Hotch says flatly, and follows Emily out of the cave.

 

* * *

 

“Spencer,” he says, when they walk outside and the clouds break overhead, casting a gloomy kind of silver light down on them. It makes the snow whiter, and casts Emily into a formless shadow of black that watches him with barely glittering eyes. “Is he…”

Her ears flick back and lay flat, miserable. It cements his decision.

Tie off. Shoes. He hisses unhappily at the painfully icy touch of the cold through his socks.

There’s a crunch of fresh snow being compacted under feet, and when he looks up Emily is human again and there’s half a smile on her lips. Her feet are bare, despite the bitter weather, her shirt is undone and there’s a wildness to her eyes that suggests she’s having a lot more fun than she’ll ever admit. “You might want to wait until you do that,” she says wryly. “It’s a little chilly out here. Frostbite is a bitch.”

He shrugs his coat off, folds it neatly and places it on the snow. Rolls his shirtsleeve up. “Perhaps we should hurry then,” he stammers through chattering teeth, refusing to retreat back to the cave and the watchful eyes within. He still has some dignity. She walks forward and her gait has changed, just ever so slightly, wolf-like and predatory. It looks natural on her. He thinks that, out of all of them, she’s probably going to recover from this the easiest.

He steels himself as she presses against him. There’s a musky sharpness to her skin and her clothes that he knows wasn’t there before. Something low in his belly responds with a slow coiling of interest at that scent, irrepressibly attracted to it despite the danger he knows it implies. He opens his mouth to say something and she swallows the words with her mouth, stealing his breath with a violence that startles him just as much as it doesn’t overly surprise him. He doubts Emily Prentiss needs to be a werewolf to take control in bed. Unfortunately, he’s always had control issues. He doesn’t submit easily.

To anyone.

The shivering in his extremities is slowing and he knows that’s dangerous, but before he can point it out, she’s shifted her mouth to his jaw, his throat, his shoulder. Nudging his shirt back with her mouth, pressing her lips to the exact spot on his body where the bite that began all this lies on Spencer’s.

She kisses it, gently, a featherlike brush of lips.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her breath hot on chilled skin, and then she bites with teeth that are only barely human, and she bites hard.

He cries out. How could he not? There’s blood and it’s hot and runs freely. When she looks up at him, her eyes are wide with fear, dark with arousal and there’s blood in a crimson line on her lip

“Hotch,” she begins, and almost pulls away. She’s panicking. Not all that blood is his. She’s bitten her lip in her wordless panic. “Are you—”

He silences her with his own mouth and she tastes like copper. The cold recedes. He inhales with the shock of the heat it brings.

The scents.

“You smell like Spencer,” he says, because suddenly that’s all he can focus on, and it sets the burning from a throbbing warmth in his shoulder and groin to an inferno that covers him. She stares at him. “I can smell him on you. His sweat. His fear. His…” _Come. I can smell his come in you._ He trails off and chokes on those words, feeling his face flushing with shame at what he’d almost said.

“Holy shit,” she says with a shaken laugh. “That was quick. It took Reid almost a day to hit this point of crazy.” It’s tempting to point out that they don’t really have a day to ease into this slowly and that he’s fine, his head is clear, but he’s just noticed the shadow of a bruise on her collarbone. If he thinks about it, he can imagine exactly how Spencer would have placed his lips to leave that kind of bruise, the noise he would have made as he did it, the shy, almost apologetic glance he would have given her after giving into the impulse…

He covers that spot with his own mouth and nips gently at the skin there, just once, and she shivers. He leaves his own bruise, his own mark, and watches the pale skin as it reddens. Then he bites it again, harder, because he can and because he doesn’t entirely like sharing. He feels his cock twitch, and groans with the wanting it brings.

Her arms slide around him and pull him in line with her body, every part of them that’s touching burning with the sensation. One hand curls up his spine, bunching his shirt up and letting it fall, fingers curling into his hair and tugging, almost too hard, leaving pinpricks of pain that are just sharp enough to feel good.

He's hard in seconds and she wants more.

Hands fumble at his waist, his belt, and he hasn’t even got his pants off before she slips her hand in and under the waistband of his underwear. Fingers wrap around him, stroking awkwardly in the tight space and he rocks into that hand with a hiss, feeling her grip tighten slightly, coaxing, teasing. The movement of his body against hers pushes his crotch into hers, and she wriggles against her own hand, closing her eyes for a second and glancing down, her eyelashes making dark half-moons against flushed cheeks.

A thumb rubs over the head of his cock and there’s the warm-tacky touch of wetness on that thumb tip that he can smell, even without focusing, as well as the spice-edged tang of her own arousal.

“Not yet, wait,” he says, despite wanting everything but, and grips her wrist gently as he tugs it away from himself. “Wait,” he says again as he lifts that delicate wrist to her mouth. She obeys his unspoken command and drags teeth that are far too sharp to be human across her palm, leaving a thin beading of red that wells quickly in the lines of her skin. Before she brings her hand to his shoulder, to the bite, he brushes his lips against that wound. It’s the least he can give her, some comfort that the pain she’s taken because of his inability to keep his team safe isn’t for nothing. That there’s something left of their team to walk out of this nightmare.

Then, she presses her hand down against his shoulder, and the world dulls and sharpens all at once. He clings to his mind. He clings to his focus.

He stays himself, and he stays with her.

She breathes in once, hard and shocked, as he tugs her pants down and her underwear just enough and pulls her close against him again, sliding his length between her legs to rest in the warm junction of her. When he shifts like this, even a little, he can feel that she’s wet and getting wetter, the head of his cock pressing against that tantalizing entrance, fighting the urge to push just that little more.

“Hotch, damnit,” she’s saying, and wriggling in his arms almost, trying to rock onto him. “Stop teasing, just… Christ… _fuck_ me already, would you?” Her voice skips as he threatens to do just that and she tenses ready.

“Slowly,” he repeats, and kisses her, tasting the shape of her lips as she moans into his mouth. He angles, slips inside just barely and she shudders. “Slowly,” he almost groans, sliding into her with just that, almost painful care, feeling her clench and shake around him. Slowly, slowly, and he can feel every inch of her as he works his way inside.

She bites him again, unexpectedly, and he yelps, feeling those sharp teeth nip at his shoulder. “Fuck you,” she snaps against his skin, and bites again, gentler, her tongue flicking gently over the red mark she leaves behind. “ _Ohh_ fuck, fuck you Aaron Hotchner.”

He pants against her, once, twice, feeling his heart hammering and every beat of her own heart through where they’re joined. They’re not moving, just holding each other close in this clearing, almost fully dressed still, surrounded by freshly banked snow and both choking on the scent of each other and pine and mud and _everything._ There’s so much scent, so much noise, so much of her, and he’s afraid that if he moves, he’ll lose track of it all.

He’s shaking and shaking and suddenly she’s there in his mind, curling around him protectively and purring with a fractured kind of almost satisfaction. _Hurry up, Hotchner,_ whispers her voice, and it’s impossible to ignore despite her lips not moving. _Places to be. Wolf asses to kick._

_Impatient,_ he replies curtly, and rolls his hips into her, feeling them grind together. He does it again. One more time and she jerks and muffles a cry with his chest, pressing her face to his shirt, and he can feel the ripples of her climax shuddering through her body. He can feel the way she’s tightening around him, and it doesn’t stop. He can feel her mind, and it drags him with her, and finally, he can feel the building rush of his own orgasm as it shakes him apart and spills into her, despite them barely moving.

Most of all, he can feel the wolf. In both of them.

He’s not sure if the soft noise he makes against her hair is a moan or a snarl, and he doesn’t waste time working it out.

They change together.

 

* * *

 

There’s a time between sliding out of her and falling to his knees in the snow where he isn’t sure of everything. He closes his eyes to try and remember. When he opens them, the world is sharp-edged and wild, and when he gasps it comes out a growl. She steps in front of him and he’d thought she was stunning, harsh and dangerous, the first moment he’d seen her wolf-form in the cave, but it’s different now. It’s still harsh, still dangerous, and there’s a look in her dark eyes that promises violence, but it’s almost familiar. He hadn’t seen her in those eyes when he’d seen her wolf-form as a human. Through his own wolf eyes though, he knows her in an instant. He can see the kindness, too. And the loyalty.

_“I don’t feel her at all anymore,”_ Emily says, and licks his muzzle, then his shoulder, nudging close and ignoring his discomfort. Apparently boundaries vanish once they walk on four legs instead of two. She licks his shoulder twice, whining against the injury, then steps back to peer up at him. He’s taller than she is. That’s a frightening thought, since she’d come easily to his waist when he’d seen her in the cave.

_“What does that mean?”_ he asks as soon as he remembers how to talk, testing his new form and taking a few wobbly steps forward. He shakes his fur and huffs, breath fogging hotly in front of him. The ground is alive under his feet, the air alive above him. Spencer must be going mad with so much to pay attention to. He almost laughs, thinking of how excited the man would be to have so many new ways to explore the world. The heat has been replaced by a giddy kind of wonder, as though the infection is trying to overcompensate for the horror of the transformation with joy at what it offers once over.

_“It means,”_ Emily says with a sly smile that he knows is a smile despite her not having the facial features to make such an expression anymore. It’s a smile in her eyes and in her voice, and he knows it instantly, _“that she has no hold over me. Or you. You never faltered once, Hotch. Not once. Even I lost myself while changing.”_ She turns in place and leaps back with a quick bunching of the powerful muscles of her hindquarters. _“It means we have our own leader to follow.”_

He stares at her. He closes his eyes, opening them again and finding her still there, loyal and wild and steady. There’s a noise behind them and, when he turns, the three wolves that had sheltered with them are padding slowly, nervously, towards them. They’re not strangers anymore. With one inhalation, he knows them. _Male, young adult. That one smokes. That one wears the same cologne as Morgan, just more of it. That one is ill, asthma. His lungs rattle._ He knows them in seconds. When he feels the gentle brush of one of them against his mind, he allows it. He’s not sure how he does it, but he does.

_“Let’s go get your team, agent,”_ says the smoker. _“Let’s end this.”_

_“We’ll follow you,”_ chorus the others.

So he leads.


	17. JJ – Wake the White Wolf

Rossi slows them up, which doesn’t bother JJ. Not beyond her distress at his pain. However, Rossi also knows he’s slowing them up, and that bothers her a lot because he’s a stubborn old—

_“Leave me,”_ he snaps again for the fifth time in as many minutes, and JJ sees Morgan roll his eyes. It’s an odd gesture for a wolf to make, and the fur on her shoulders stands on end. She thinks maybe being this wolf thing is going to take a lot of getting used to. If they can’t fix it anyway. She hopes to god they can fix it and this will all become some horrible nightmare they can forget.

There’s a heavy suspicion in her mind that maybe she can move past this; she’s almost certain she can because her mind is already doing a damn good job of blurring the gory details of it, but there’s a brittleness to Morgan that wasn’t there before. He’s damaged and hurting and she can feel it tearing him in two.

She doesn’t know how to reach him.

_“We’re not leaving you, so stop telling us to,”_ Morgan retorts, and continues shoving his powerful chest through the banked up snow, clearing a path for the injured wolf to limp through. _“They’re not chasing us anymore. Not since Hotch…”_ He trails off and there it is again, the pain.

JJ tries to think of the moment she was changed, and she can’t. It’s a blur of heat and noise and senses and the vaguest memory of someone holding her close. She doesn’t want to think of Rossi. Not until she knows he doesn’t hate her for her part in it. Hotch’s had felt different, from the vague feeling they’d gotten from it. Calmer. More controlled. He’s still himself, still strong, and they’d found they could feed from that strength and use it to buoy their flagging energy just enough to get them back to the cabin. They’re hurt, hungry and heartsore, and JJ knows they’re at breaking point. She also knows that something terrible happened on that mountain to Morgan, but she can’t ask him about it because she knows he doesn’t want to think about it.

_“The cabin’s just ahead,”_ she says as a reply, and hears a low groan from Rossi that sounds almost as though it slipped out unconsciously. The wind shifts. _“Shit.”_

_“Chances of them being friendly?”_ Morgan asks as the air brings to them the scent of wolves. Silence settles on them, broken by the crunch of snow and the uneven gait of their paws.

Rossi breaks it. _“Doesn’t matter,”_ he says heavily. _“We’re in no shape to get away. I never thought I’d say this, but fuck me, I hope it’s Shades.”_

The corner of the cabin’s roof peaks over the canopy above as it thins. They leave the trees together.

 

* * *

 

The wolf that greets them isn’t Shades, and if she was capable, she’d almost cry out from relief.

_“Thank god,”_ says Dr. Shaffer, limping towards them with his muzzle and cheek a ragged mess of bloodied fur. _“When I lost you, I thought the worst. I mean, this isn’t the best outcome, but—”_

_“How come we can hear you?”_ Rossi says, interrupting the doctor as he keeps a careful distance from them, sweeping a careful eye over them for injury. _“I thought we could only hear those from our packs.”_

Shades is there a moment later, and he’s wrecked. JJ can smell the exhaustion on him. Behind him, wolves she’s never seen before mill, humans mixed within their ranks. The air stinks of gunpowder and metal. They’re armed, every one of them, and the crowd bristles. _“No idea,”_ he says shortly. _“Something is happening up there, something big. It’s shaking everything up. I’ve got wolves coming down off those peaks that ain’t ever come down before, saying they want out. Saying they got their minds back. Your man is at the centre of it all.”_

_“Reid?”_ Morgan sounds incredulous.

_“Hotch,”_ Rossi corrects him, and his voice is proud. _“Damn right he is. He said he’d fix this, and he hasn’t broken a promise yet.”_

_“We’re ending this now, agents.”_ Shades turns and barks harshly, and every head in the area snaps towards him. _“The way we should have before you even got dragged into this mess, and I’m so fucking sorry you did. I can’t change what’s happened. But I can get justice for you and for those that died due to my inaction.”_

_“You’ve got murder in mind, not justice,”_ Rossi says, stepping up beside her. JJ sees Shaffer’s gaze drop to his leg, and his muzzle furrows in concern. _“Not every wolf up there is a killer. She got in our heads too, we can vouch. It’s damn near impossible to shake her out, and I only got a second-hand dose of her crazy. She’s still got some of our people up there—we’re not letting you start a war where they can get caught in the crossfire.”_

There’s a long tense silence between the two men. Finally, _“Very well, agent. You lead.”_

Rossi blinks. _“What?”_

_“Your men. Your lead. We’ll follow you and yours.”_

_“You’d hand over your pack to a stranger? A stranger who’s only been a… like this… for not even a day yet?”_ Morgan shakes his fur out as he asks, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

JJ looks around at the wolves around her. At Shaffer, and his son standing by the cabin door as a human with a dark haired man by his side. At the humans that walk among the werewolves like it’s normal. At the few wolves that hang on the sidelines, nervous and shaken and scented with the forest instead of the town. _“He’s not handing over his pack,”_ she says slowly, carefully. Shades watches her. _“It’s not his pack. It’s just… a pack.”_

_“Clever girl,”_ the sheriff says, and his muzzle twitches in what’s almost a smile. _“We follow the wolf that’s right for the job at hand. Right now, that’s you lot, newbies or not. Our pack isn’t like hers—it’s not a prison. It’s a family.”_

_“Then let’s go get ours,”_ Rossi says finally, nodding, and there’s a reclaimed bounce in his gait despite his leg, _“so we can go home. I really need a damn drink.”_

 

* * *

 

They outnumber the other wolves, and as soon as they begin to spread through the forest as a hunting wave, the other wolves melt away in front of them. One moment they’re facing a bristling wall of emptiness, and the next all JJ can hear is confused cries of surprise and fear. The wolves around her celebrate with every mind freed, and all JJ can think is _why_. Why give up the power she’d fought for for so long? Why so easily? Why isn’t Charlotte fighting them?

And she has a horrible suspicion she knows the answer.

_“Where’s Spence?”_ she asks Rossi, and the man shrugs.

_“We’ll find him,”_ he tries to soothe, but there’s fear thundering through her that’s not all hers and if she reaches beyond the roar of voices around her, she can feel the barest whisper of his mind far away from her. She races towards it and hopes she’s wrong. She hopes that Charlotte hasn’t decided to cut her losses and run with the one prize she’d risked it all for.

She’ll be damned if she’ll let her take him.

 

* * *

 

Her paws skid on a rock and she pauses, looking down on the scene below. A small amount of wolves, moving silently but steadily up the mountain through a narrow gully.

Escaping.

_“Freeze! FBI!”_ she shouts, and steps out onto the ridge above. They’re only a head below her, but they all tense and look up, eyes identically cold. Not empty, not like the rest that had surrendered.

These ones follow Charlotte willingly.

JJ suddenly feels very, very alone, despite knowing that there are a dozen of Shade’s men within shouting distance of her and already turning to move in her direction at her shout. There’s an itch in her mind, like someone is trying to talk to her and failing, and she narrows her eyes. She can’t hear them, any of them. She growls to be sure they got her message and hears Morgan echoing the sentiment from the other side of the gully, cutting them off.

A pebble snicks behind her, knocked by a careful paw, and she turns to face it just in time to see Charlotte dropping onto her from the rock above. _“Traitorous mongrel!”_  the wolf snarls as she leaps, and the most frightening thing about her is how sane her mind feels. _“You ruined us!”_

JJ goes down at first, but she doesn’t stay down. _“This is for my team, you bitch,”_ she replies calmly, and then she fights back.

A bite to her face is what almost kills her. It’s a lucky shot, the barest glance of Charlotte’s canine across her brow, but it’s enough to blind her with blood on her right side. It’s enough for Charlotte to get the upper hand.

It’s enough to be the end of her, and she thinks of Henry and Will as the bigger wolf knocks her down and goes for the kill. Then, strangely, she thinks of Spencer.

_“JJ!”_ he shouts. For a moment, she thinks she’s hallucinating. She turns and he’s there, a furious tawny form with hazel eyes turned dark with fury, and he’s angry enough that even Charlotte falls back from his vicious, slashing assault. But she gets the upper hand quickly, too quickly, and JJ hasn’t even regained her breath to help him yet. He slips, Charlotte lunges. JJ feels his mind falter, still torn between himself and her.

_“Spence, go!”_ JJ screams, because she knows Charlotte won’t give him up, not alive. _“Run!”_ He whines and hesitates, looking from Charlotte to her, and there’s blood on his muzzle and patterning the creamy patch of fur on his belly and chest, his single white paw held out uncertainly to her. She wants to pull him close and smooth away that fear, but before she can cry out again, he’s gone. She’d seen how fast he was earlier when he’d fled from her, and she can only hope he’s still just as startlingly quick.

Charlotte pursues him, and JJ takes a deep breath, pushes the pain away, and staggers after.

_“Fuck off!”_ Charlotte calls back once, upon realizing that JJ hasn’t given up her determined pursuit, but before JJ can reply with something suitably cutting, she’s interrupted.

_“How about no,”_ Emily says calmly, and slams into the werewolf’s side with bone-breaking force, going down in a flurry of glossy black fur and snapping white teeth. _“How about if you touch our friend again, I’ll fucking shoot you.”_

JJ sees Charlotte angling herself for a shot at Emily’s throat and darts forward to snap her jaws closed around the woman’s hind paw, dragging it out from under her.

_“Two on one—oh yes, is this how you people play it,”_ Charlotte snarls. _“Cowards.”_

_“Fair play went out the window as soon as you decided to assault a federal agent,”_ JJ replies, circling her. Emily mirrors her, black where JJ is white, but just as deadly.

_“JJ.”_ The new voice is firm and solid and so fucking good to hear JJ almost gasps with relief.

_“Hotch. Spencer’s running, he’s hurt…”_ She turns and Hotch is there, towering over her easily, but his eyes are his own. His runs his muzzle over her forehead, nudging her ears gently.

_“Which way?”_

JJ tells him. He nods and looks at Charlotte. _“We’ll hold her back,”_ JJ says, and Charlotte snarls. _“Go get him, Aaron. Bring him home, please.”_

_“I will,”_ their boss replies quietly, vanishing with frightening silence for a wolf so huge. _“I promise.”_

She doesn’t doubt him for a second.


	18. Reid – Animal I Have Become

His mind clears for the first time in days and his team is _there_. Not physically. Physically he’s standing as a wolf by a half-dead pine tree with the kid at his side and the scent of Emily and JJ thick on his fur. Physically, he’s surrounded by wolves that have killed before and will kill him in an instant if he even looks like he’s regaining his mind. Physically, he’s about as damned as it’s possible to be.

But mentally?

Mentally, he can hear his team. Distant and wavering and almost drowned out by the harsh, angry bickering of the forest wolves around him, but they’re there. That’s frightening because it means they’re like him.

And he knows it’s his fault.

_“What’s wrong?”_ asks the boy cautiously, and Reid remembers suddenly the photos of the missing hiker. The boy and his older brother. Here, all along, and he’d been too busy being consumed by his fractured mind to pay attention. _“Are you… you?”_

He swallows and it’s almost a whine. Memories whirl. JJ standing over him. Rossi falling from the tree, crying out in pain. Morgan. Just… crying.

A wolf that’s easily two times his size turns and watches them suspiciously. He growls. Reid listens. _Traitors. Mutts. Hate. Traitors traitorstraitors._

JJ’s face is in every one of their thoughts. JJ. They’re blaming her for what he’s done. They’re _hunting_ her.

_“When I say run,”_ Reid says quietly, and the boy stiffens and his ears slip down to press against his skull. _“Please, run.”_ If he can hear his team, he can reach them.

_“My brother…”_

Reid wonders why his mind is clear now. There’s a looming presence coming down the mountain. It feels like Charlotte, a force of power, but… cleaner. The other wolves are torn between listening to that new mind, or fighting amongst themselves as they plan their revenge on JJ for deserting them.

_“Just run. And don’t stop.”_ Reid hesitates. The suspicious wolf looks away, just for a second. There’s no sign of Charlotte. _“Now. Run!”_  Down the mountain, away from that force. Not another Charlotte. He can’t face another Charlotte.

They run. They’re pursued, which solidifies Reid’s suspicion that the wolves left around them were there purely to keep the rest of his team away. Reid’s faster than all of them. Turns out being small and slight isn’t always a downside. The boy paces him, barely.

_“They’re going to kill us,”_ howls the boy in terror, and Reid can’t think to reassure him. _“Jake, please! It’s me! It’s Kyle!”_

The wolves chasing them are silent, and they don’t falter.

_Where’s Charlotte?_ Reid thinks with a burst of raw fear and horror (and something warmer and that coaxes him to go to her, and reminds him he’s not safe yet). _Why isn’t she chasing us?_

There’s a screaming yelp from down the valley and every wolf there hears it. But only he knows it. _JJ_ , he realizes, and turns to race towards that sound. He hopes he’s in time.

_“Keep going—head for the town,”_ he instructs the boy and the boy doesn’t listen, but he can’t pause. He has to get to his team. He has to get to JJ. His paws barely brush the surface of the snow, and he feels out of control, hurtling wildly towards some inexorable destination as the trees flash by and the mountain flashes by and finally, finally, wolves begin to flash by.

Like stop-motion images in the corner of his eyes, he sees wolves jerkily turn to face him, gone in an instant. He sees Morgan, cornered by three wolves smaller than him but twice as fierce. He sees Rossi with his broken leg and dark grey fur, still warning the wolves away from Morgan with every inch of force he possesses. And he sees JJ. He sees blood on her creamy fur, her throat, her muzzle, her flanks. Charlotte is over her, and there’s no blood he can see on her pitch-dark fur, but when she dances around his fallen friend, she speckles the snow with red.

_“JJ!”_

They both turn to face him and he lunges without making a sound. If he gives her warning, he’ll never survive this.

He’s not sure he’s going to anyway. Charlotte is a crushing force on his mind and he can fight it, until he can’t. He can fight it, until his paws slip under him and he’s just ever so slightly too slow, and she’s on him with slashing jaws. They both scream—him with pain, her with triumphant anger—and the snow under them is slush and red and pain.

His mind fails and he runs, again, and this time it’s to save his life.

_“Spence, go!”_ cries the white wolf, and snaps at Charlotte’s leg to slow her.

He runs.

And he runs and runs and he howls once in fear because he knows she’s still chasing him and his legs are failing and he’s bleeding, he knows he is, and he can’t remember who he is. She doesn’t give up.

He has no choice but to.

The night darkens, the air chills, and she still chases. He can’t hear his team unless he focuses. He can’t hear the pack, thankfully. He hears her, and she’s furious, and screaming for his blood. Voices clamour in his mind, almost drowned out by her anger. They’re trying to call him back to himself, but he’s running from them too and the memory of what he did to them. To the ones he loves.

Eventually, he stops. And she doesn’t. The ground is cold under his side and he waits for her. She may have destroyed his mind, but he knows enough to know it isn’t love she brings him. He broke that when he chose JJ over her.

She’s bringing death.

He’s almost grateful.

 

* * *

 

Paws padding across the snow towards him, slow and heavy.

He’s sick with pain and horror and misery and he’s shaking, tries to stand because some small part of him wants to live, and he gags. Chokes on bile that tastes like copper and vomit. His hind legs ignore him and, for the first time in days, he’s cold. Reid stares at the sky because it might be the last time he gets to, and he’s lying in a hot pool of his own blood. There’s a break in the silver clouds, revealing the ink-dark sky and a splash of stars.

When he looks away, there’s a wolf stepping towards him that’s as dark as that sky, and as powerfully endless.

_“What more can you take from me that you haven’t already taken?”_ he asks, his voice is a fading whisper. The wolf answers and he can’t listen, _won’t_ listen. _“My life is already over. You’ve destroyed me.”_

There’s a dark muzzle at his throat, brushing gently against his fur in a parody of a caress. He tenses and waits for them to close around him. The voice continues, soft, pleading, and he knows it’s a trap. She just wants to pull him in again, make him forget his team, make him _hurt_ them.

The wolf licks him, once. Twice. It whines and the sound is agony.

And it’s not Charlotte.

Reid closes his eyes in case he’s wrong. _“You’re not her.”_ It’s a revelation. He should be shocked, delighted, hopeful. All he is is tired and cold and weary.

_“I love you,”_ the wolf says.

_No, you don’t,_ Reid thinks.

_“Get up, please.”_

_No. Let me die._

_“Nothing that happened to us was you. It was her. You’d never hurt us.”_

_But I did._

The wolf keeps going and Reid has no choice but to listen. It talks about love, about a man so helplessly kind that falling in love with him was impossible to resist. About family. About searching. It talks about loss. The other wolf is sad, terribly sad. Reid’s sorry for that. He tells it so. He can’t imagine being loved that much, not with what he’s done.

_“If you care for him so much, why don’t you tell him so?”_ Reid says finally, because the other wolf won’t stop and Reid wants to help him. It can be his final duty. _“If he knew, he’d come back to you.”_

_“I’m trying,”_ says the other wolf, lying next to him. _“Help me. Don’t go to sleep. They’re coming.”_

Reid drifts away and it’s blissful.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up and he’s being carried, front paws and head hanging limply over a broad shoulder. If he tilts his head, they’re walking by a ridge, and he can smell snow and skin and frozen water nearby. Rocks underneath. The man holding him walks on the rocks, under the icy spray of the nearby falls, trying to muddy their scent. Trying to hide them from pursuers. There’s a heart beating against his ribcage, and he knows who carries him.

_“You do know I could kill you in an instant?”_ he says. He hadn’t meant to say that at all, but Charlotte still lingers.

_Yes,_ comes the distant reply.

_“Then why risk it?”_

_Because I promised I’d bring you home._

Reid shifts and the man staggers and falls under the sudden awkwardness of the weight in his arms. He rolls away, straightening on his knees and ignoring the spider-webbing of pain as wounds across his body reopen and bring a gasp to his lips.

Hotch steadies him. “Whoa, easy there,” he soothes, his hands brushing across his chest, his chin, his hair. “Hey, Spence, come on. Come on. It’s okay. You’re hurt, but we’re going to get you home.”

The air is thick with the smell of wolf and blood. “You’re one of them,” Reid says, and his head spins. “You smell of mutt.”

Hotch freezes. “That’s not you talking. That’s her. Shake her off, Spence.”

“You don’t call me Spence. Don’t call me that.” _JJ. Hurt, bleeding, fighting. Possibly dead. She could be dead._ _Because of you. Your fault, all your fault._

“Did I turn you, too?” he asks, and almost cries out because the words tear him open on the way out and leave him hollow. “Oh god, Aaron, I’m so sorry.”

Aaron reaches for him again, and Reid can’t bear it. He shifts and snarls, and Hotch pulls back. Fear. He fears him.

He should.

A low snarl that isn’t his echoes towards them, and Hotch stands and turns his back on Reid. Reid peers around him and Charlotte is there, limping. _“Your team tried to stop me,”_ she says coldly to Hotch, and Reid’s heart twists in his chest in panic at the cruel delight in her voice. _“I stopped them first. You’re alone, agent. Alone and no one is coming for you. The last. You’ve already lost him. He’s mine.”_

_I’m not anyone’s,_ Reid thinks, and backs away cautiously, the rocks under his paws cutting into his pads. _Least of all yours._

_“The black bitch put up a particular fight.”_ Charlotte’s still talking. Still hurting them. _“I crushed the life from her throat while the old man watched and wept. Then I finished him, and it was easy.”_

Hotch doesn’t make a sound. He just tumbles forward and he’s a wolf, dark as Charlotte and within an inch of her size, but now they’re together Reid knows that Hotch is four times as powerful as Charlotte could ever be. It’s a quiet, subtle power, and it’s the kind that people willingly follow. It’s the kind of power that Charlotte couldn’t possibly imagine.

In that instant of realizing, Reid’s mind clears. He straightens. There’s a rolling anger emanating from Hotch, like he’s an instant from losing control. _“No, you didn’t,”_ Reid calls, and sees Hotch twitch in surprise. _“You’re lying. You’re trying to scare us so we can’t hear them, but it won’t work.”_

_“Damn right it won’t,”_ Emily says, and she’s limping up behind Reid, hackles up and eyes savagely eager. _“You ran from me. I was kicking your ass.”_

_“Welcome back, kid.”_ Rossi. Slow and in pain, but still himself. _“When this is over, I’m buying you a leash.”_

_“Hey, Reid.”_ Morgan. There’s a reservation there Reid’s going to have to face later. Morgan stands by the exit, blocking Charlotte in, Rossi just behind him. JJ doesn’t say anything. She just quietly makes her way to stand by Hotch’s side, blocking the narrow path so Charlotte can’t get past her to reach her team. Any of them. Emily stands by Reid’s side, and she’s brash and cocky, but he can feel her pain.

_“Stand down, Charlotte,”_ Hotch says coolly. _“We’re bringing you in. This is the end of this. Your wolves won’t follow you now. None of them. We’ve given them something you never did.”_

_“Freedom.”_ Emily’s voice is cold. Out of all of them, she values her own path the most.

Reid could have told them Charlotte wouldn’t go down without a fight. He could have told him she wasn’t as hurt as she seemed. He could have.

He didn’t.

She lays flat, neck extended in submission, and when Hotch moves towards her she waits until he’s hovering over her before lunging for his throat. Still new to his wolf form, still slow, and he doesn’t move in time before those jaws snap shut. He yelps, but it comes out strangled and wet, and they all scream because they all feel it.

Reid screams too but, unlike them, he’s spent more time on four paws the last three days than two and he’s felt pack members hurt and die and bleed. It doesn’t stun him like it does them.

He flings himself forward and finds her neck. The base of her skull. _Unique to felines, the jaguar often uses its canines to pierce directly through the temporal bones of the skull to pierce the brain._ _Wolves don’t have that much bite force._

_Try anyway._

His fangs pierce and grate against bone and he bites down, clings as she screams and shakes. Releases Hotch and whirls into the air, flinging Reid around like a kite, helpless but refusing to let go. As long as he hangs on, she can’t hurt his team. He’s just got to give them time to recover, to subdue her.

He’s a lot smaller than she is.

He clings as she jumps and he clings as she rolls, and he clings as her paws slip from under her and they both pitch off the side of the ridge to the water below.


	19. Still Fighting It

Hotch is frozen.

The others aren’t.

_“Spence!”_ screams JJ, and she lunges at the ridge, paws scrabbling dangerously at the side.

_“Not there, you’ll end up joining them,”_ Rossi says, and bounds past unevenly, ignoring the agony that his leg must have brought him at the sudden move. _“Down here!”_ He races down the ridge.

Hotch doesn’t move.

_“They’re under the ice!”_ says someone that could be Emily.

He doesn’t move.

 

* * *

 

The ridge is slick with the icy spray from the meltwater falls, and Morgan almost slips on his ass as he sprints down it. The others aren’t faring any better. Rossi’s one good hind leg slips out from under him and sends him skidding down on his flank. It had to hurt. Morgan flinches because he _knows_ it fucking hurt, but Rossi leaps back up at the bottom like nothing happened and continues on.

The rocks turn to snow, turn to mud, and then the ridge looms above and they’re at the river. It’s wide and deep and cold, and the edges are frosted with fractured ice. The centre is a torrent, deceptively calm looking. Morgan knows, he _knows_ , that, under that calm, a current drags everything inexorably under the ice downstream. And there’s no sign of Charlotte.

No sign of Reid.

All there is is the broken ice where they’d fallen, and the suggestion of blood on the rocks.

_“What are you waiting for, move!”_ snarls Emily, and she’s gone, a leaping, racing black form down the side of the river. _“He can swim. We’ll drag him out!”_

Morgan hopes they can. _Fuck,_ he hopes they can. He scans the water and everything in him is screaming to spot a spray of tan fur or tousled brown hair. Anything. _Anything._ Anything to suggest that Reid isn’t gone without Morgan ever getting the chance to say he’s sorry.

_“Reid!”_ he howls, and there’s no answer.

 

* * *

 

Emily runs and JJ follows, looking from the river and its muddy banks and back to the steady beat of the dark paws in front of her. _“I can’t see him,”_ JJ cries out once, when it feels like they’ve been running an impossibly long time. In reality, it’s only been minutes and they can still hear the soft hum of the falls behind them. _“Emily, I can’t see him anywhere!”_

Emily ignores her and keeps running, swerving away from the bank violently as soon as the ice meets in the centre of the river, and scrabbling across the slick surface to reach the other side. JJ pauses and watches with her heart in her throat, every part of her aching with fear and pain as the ice whines under Emily’s paws. _“Stay on that side,”_ she commands, and claws her way onto the opposite bank. _“Keep going.”_

_“Where’s Hotch?”_ JJ asks Rossi when the wolf limps up to her, head hanging low and tongue lolling. She notes with concern that his mouth is flecked with white, the gums visible around long fangs just as pale, and he’s shuddering.

_“Don’t know,”_ he grunts, and keeps going. A crash of foliage and Hotch lunges past, ignoring them and vanishing just as quickly, following the bank. JJ watches him go.

She’s hurt. There’s a trail of blood following her paws. That wouldn’t stop her, but as she tentatively follows Rossi she can see his path starting to waver as he staggers and falters. They can’t keep going.

She howls.

 

* * *

 

Morgan sees Emily dash fearlessly across the ice, and he can’t follow. It’s still too thin, too tentative, and he’s forced to watch her vanish downstream in her desperate search as he scans the surface for somewhere thick enough to carry his greater weight. He wishes he had a radio. Or his cell. Or basically anything fucking else besides four paws and a nose that’s useless for searching under the ice-covered water.

Then, JJ begins to howl and it’s agony. It’s not even words, not as they understand them, just a fear of loss and the knowledge of loss. It’s a call for help and a call for Reid to answer all at once, and on top of it all is her own unique song. In that moment, he knows why wolves howl, and he realizes he’d know any of their songs in an instant. He wonders what Reid’s sounds like.

And then there’s an answer. And another.

And another.

The forest comes alive with howls and in seconds they’re surrounded, other wolves flickering out of the woods and answering that call.

A shoulder brushes Morgan’s. Shades. _“He’s in the river,”_ Morgan says and then stops, because his voice is breaking despite not having the vocal cords to crack, but he doesn’t seem to need to say anything more.

_“Stay with them,”_ the sheriff orders, tilting his muzzle towards Morgan’s injured teammates. _“We’ll find him.”_

Morgan has no choice but to trust him.

 

* * *

 

He can’t. After everything they’ve given each other, every sacrifice they’ve made, at the time he’s most needed, Rossi’s let them down. He sinks to the ground and his leg is on fire, his body burning with it. If he reaches for where he thinks Reid’s mind should be, all he can feel is dark and cold and nothing. JJ lays next to him, warm against his back, and she’s breathing rapidly, her sides heaving with her panicked gasps.

_“It’s okay,”_ he tries to soothe her, despite it being anything but. _“They’ll find him. There’s three dozen giant fuck-off wolves looking. They can’t miss him.”_

_“Agent Rossi.”_ The doctor. He’s padding towards him and Rossi has to do a double take because there’s a vest on his back with a bag attached and it looks absolutely ridiculous. Possibly even more ridiculous than his reindeer jumper had been. _“Are you hurt?”_

_“Not me,”_ Rossi lies, because one look at JJ and the adrenaline rush is enough to chase his pain away slightly. The whites of her eyes are showing and her nostrils flaring red, and if she was human he’d have her breathing in a paper bag right now. _“Her. Help her.”_

_“How about we help you both,”_ he says instead. _“We’ve got medics coming. Just stay still.”_

He shrugs the vest off, shifts to human, and presses a steady hand against Rossi’s side like he’s used to this. Rossi closes his eyes, lets him work, and tries not to think about everyone he’s failing with his weakness right now.

 

* * *

 

Hotch can’t think. He just runs and he runs and midnight brings darkness that hides everything from him that he needs. He has to slow, knowing it’s too fucking easy to miss a flash of colour on the ice or the banks in the gloom, and every slow step takes five beats of his heart to complete. There are other wolves around him, searching too, and they’re talking to him but he can’t think to listen.

_“Spencer, Spencer, Spencer,”_ he chants instead as a steady metronome to cling to, and he’s vaguely aware of Emily somewhere nearby doing the same.

He slips once and a wolf pauses to help him up, and he smells the forest and Charlotte on them. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore. None of it seems to matter. Forest or town, they all search the same. They all fail the same.

And finally: _“Agent.”_ Shades. Hotch hates him in that moment, and he wishes he could show that but he can’t remember how to be anything other than scared. _“We have to stop. It’s too dark, too cold. Your team is hurt. They’re starved. It’s been days since any of you have eaten, and half of these wolves are hardly any better.”_

_“No,”_ says Hotch, and he leaves them behind. _“Look after them. I have to keep going.”_

He won’t stop.

He’d promised.

 

* * *

 

Not all the wolves leave when Shades does. Some stay.

_“It’s our fault he’s here in the first place,”_ says the female ranger from so long ago, and she stays by Emily’s side. It’s the ranger who sees the body first, thrown against the bank by an uncaring current and tumbled with the rocks and branches that broke through the ice around it. When Emily looks, she sees tan fur illuminated by a silver moon and knows he’s gone.

Emily’s heart stops for a long, endless moment, and she feels Hotch latch onto that fear.

_“Oh god, no,”_ he gasps from nearby, and begins to move towards them. She hears his howl of shock and fear, unable to see what she’s seeing, only knowing her terror.

The ranger breaks it. _“It’s Charlotte,”_ she says, and Emily blinks and the moon isn’t shining on tan anymore, but black, and the illusion is broken. _“She’s gone.”_

Emily follows her to the bank and Charlotte is a broken form, limbs twisted and jaws gaping widely. Her eyes are open. Open and empty, and Emily almost throws up at the thought of what Reid’s going to look like when they find him.

_“Charlotte,”_ Hotch murmurs, and when Emily looks up, he’s across the bank and staring at the dead wolf that started this whole nightmare. _“Spencer must be close. Keep looking.”_

They do.

And they don’t find him.

 

* * *

 

As the river narrows, the ice thins. Eventually, it’s not ice at all, but rapid currents over deadly rocks. As soon as they hit a rickety bridge and a wide dirt road, Hotch finally stops. It’s an hour from dawn and he’d keep going but he knows so long as he does, Emily will too. And her exhaustion is palpable. He can’t do that to her.

She crosses the bridge, her paws dragging and head low, and her eyes are glazed. He knows he’s not much better. In this state, they could have walked right past Reid and neither of them would have noticed.

_“I’m sorry,”_ she whispers, and sways. _“We can keep going.”_

_“No, we can’t,”_ he corrects her, and leans his head on her shoulders, letting her press against his great chest for support. _“He’s gone, Em. He’s gone.”_

She doesn’t howl, but her whine is long and mournful and more than he can voice.

They don’t even have the energy to go back to the cabin. They’re too tired to move, too wired to sleep, too grieved to speak. They lay together on the side of the road with the river rushing beside them, and they wait for the dawn.

 

* * *

 

He’s tumbling, spinning, disorientated. Every time he manages to catch a glimpse of what might be the sky, he kicks at the water and slams into ice, paws scrabbling uselessly. He shifts, twice, feeling his lungs scream in both forms, and eventually he’s not even sure if he’s human or wolf or something in between.

He goes limp.

He sinks.

And then he snaps awake and someone is screaming his name like their heart is breaking.

He kicks again and there’s a light, and he drags himself towards it. He’ll be _damned_ if he dies like this.

Then there’s air and an impact against his side that stuns him and he’s still moving, still helpless, but the light is fixed now and every time he’s dragged down, he pulls himself back up again. His fingers snag on something. He clings.

He stops.

And he finally, finally, closes his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Emily jolts awake and there’s a man leaning over her. The sun is low in the sky. Morning. Her breath fogs, and her entire body protests when she tries to move.

“Emily?” Alex says cautiously, and peers into her eyes. “Agent Prentiss? Is that you?” She whines and nods and tries again to get up. Alex stands. He’s looking around. Emily slumps back down, her side pressed against Hotch’s, and he’s still out cold. “How far have you searched?” Alex asks, but he doesn’t wait to hear an answer. “Cassie, help them.”

“Where are you going? We’re just supposed to be medical assistance, Al. Let the searchers do that.” Emily turns her head, and there’s another woman there, holding a medical bag in two hands and looking uncertain.

“Just help them.”

Emily staggers up and limps after him, leaving Hotch alone.

_“What?”_ she thinks wryly when Alex glares at her. _“I’m not leaving you. You wouldn’t leave me, after all.”_

 

* * *

 

The hours at the cabin pass slower than the past three days have. They find their phones. They don’t turn them on. They can’t face their families fear yet. Not until they know what they’re going to tell them. What the hell _can_ they tell them?

Morgan vanishes into the shower almost as soon as they get home and he’s in there so long JJ worries he’s fallen asleep. When he finally emerges, his eyes are red and she doesn’t ask. When she showers, she scrubs until her skin is raw and painful and pretends her face is hot from the steam and not the fear of what’s waiting outside the fogged glass of the stall. The water at her feet runs red and brown and, eventually, clear, but she still scrubs.

She glances in the mirror as she steps out and wraps a towel around her body, and her face is a mess. There’s a line of puncture wounds along her eyebrow, one deeper one above her eye, and around the bite the bruising is fierce and her face swells around it. When she lowers the towel, the rest of her body is the same, a patchwork design of bites and bruising. She finds the thickest sweaters she can and covers the evidence of the past few days, and pushes it out of her mind.

Morgan has heated soup while she was washing. Neither of them eat it. She tries. He takes a spoonful of his and walks out stiffly. She can hear him throwing up from down the hall.

They wait in silence for the dawn. When it comes, they move to the porch. Still waiting.

“Where are they?” Morgan demands as soon as Shades steps out of his car. “Hotch and Prentiss—they didn’t come back last night.”

“Down river a fair bit,” Shades says, resting his foot on the step into his vehicle and tilting his hat back to look at them. His eyes linger on JJ’s face, and his gaze darkens with anger. “My men found them this morning, already sent medics down to them. You’re supposed to be down at the hospital, Agent Jareau. Dr. Shaffer was adamant he wanted you and Agent Rossi there under observation.”

“I will,” JJ says calmly, and ignores the pain that standing brings. “Once you take us to our team. We’re not done yet.”

Dave had put up a hell of a fight before they’d finally gotten him in the ambulance hours before. She’d put up a bigger one. Only one of them had won.

Shades doesn’t fight them, just sighs and gets back in the car. JJ lets Morgan take shotgun and tries not to think about how he and Reid used to bicker over it. Morgan’s holding his cell in his palm, turned off. They’d found their belongings, the packs they’d been carrying, on the porch of the cabin. Some still bore teeth-marks

“You should probably turn that on,” JJ says, staring at it. “We’ve been out of contact for three days. The storm died over twelve hours ago. They’ll be going mental at home.”

“No,” he says finally, sliding it in his pocket. “Not until we find… something. I can’t tell her otherwise.”

_Garcia._

With the thought of their friend and how scared and out of the loop she must feel, homesickness hits JJ like a punch to the gut. _Will._ _Henry._ “Oh my god,” she says, and she doesn’t cry but she knows she could if she’d let herself. She won’t. Not yet. “How do I tell Henry?”

Morgan stiffens in the chair and doesn’t answer.

 

* * *

 

Hotch is in the quiet middle ground between awake and asleep, not sure if what he’s hearing is real or imagined. Water, the crunch of wheels on frosted dirt, birds, JJ…

_(aaron.)_

He leans towards that call. At first it’s Emily, angry that he’s not looking. Then it’s Morgan, hurt. Rossi, coaxing.

_(aaron…)_

Jack. He thinks of Jack. The sounds sharpen as he pulls himself awake. The voice fades.

_(please)_

He recognises it.

When he surges upright, JJ almost falls back in shock, mouth opening in a wide _O_ of shock.

_“Spencer!”_ he barks, and waits for an answer. _“I heard him!”_

They, his team—some of his team—exchange nervous glances. Hotch doesn’t need a profiler to see their doubt. He snarls at them, furious. Why won’t they _listen_? He knows what he heard! Their mouths set in identical lines of determination, both Morgan and JJ, and he knows they’ve decided to fight him on this. They’ve given up.

_They can’t have._

He turns away and tries to walk towards the direction he heard the cry, but Morgan grabs his shoulder, threading his fingers through his fur. Hotch growls again as pinpricks of pain radiate from the point where he’s gripping as fur tugs away from his skin. “Come on, man…” he says, but another voice drowns him out.

Emily. _“We found him!”_

None of them hesitate before they start running.

 

* * *

 

“You know, there’s every chance he’s alive,” Alex is saying stubbornly, ducking to avoid a branch. “I mean, if he got out the river, he’s pretty immune to exposure. Weres’ are hardy as hell when it comes to the cold and pretty resilient to injury as well. Look at your friend. He ran about the damn mountain with a damn clean break right through his— _Emily._ ”

She doesn’t need him to point, she’s already seen the ragged, sodden shape on the bank of the river, half in and out of the water. _“Spencer!”_ she shouts, and the form twitches. Whines. _Breathes._ _“We found him!”_

Alex pushes her aside, to her frustration, and sprints past, already sliding his backpack from his shoulder, falling to his knees beside the limp form, water turning tan fur a mangy dark brown. He grabs Reid by his front legs, dragging him out of the water and ignoring the quiet moan of pain it brings. The others are moving towards them, clamouring, but Emily only has ears for one voice. One voice she was almost ready to fucking give up on.

_“Get up,”_ she demands, shoving her nose _hard_ into his side and ignoring his soft grunt of protest. _“Now. I am so fucking angry with you, Spencer Reid.”_

Spencer opens one bleary, hazel eye, and rolls it at her. Keeps rolling. His back stiffens and he shudders and gags.

“Ah heck, he’s half drowned,” Alex says. “Get him to shift back, Emily. I need him human. I can’t help him if he’s a wolf.”

_“Aaron,”_ whines Reid from what sounds like miles away, and Emily bites him. Gently. Ish.

He jerks and his head snaps up, glaring at her. _“Change back,”_ she tells him firmly. _“Or I’ll bite you again.”_ He just stares. There’s more wolf in his eyes than human.

The bushes near them crash and Hotch near hurtles out of them, only pausing a second on seeing Reid.

Reid tilts his head back to look at him.

_“You’re alive,”_ Hotch gasps in the kind of voice none of them have ever heard from him, nor ever want to hear again. JJ and Morgan freeze behind him, human and cautious. “You’re alive,” Hotch repeats, and now he’s human too and stumbling forward like he’s being drawn helplessly to the tan wolf laying half sunk in mud with his lungs rattling. He stumbles, drops, and drags the wolf into his arms, pressing his mouth against the manky fur slicked to the thin skull. Reid flicks his ears, once, twice, whines.

And shifts. A thin arm reaches and wraps around the back of Hotch’s neck, pulling him closer.

“Course,” Reid slurs, closing his eyes and sagging into the man’s arms. “You’d be mad at me otherwise.” His arm slips and falls. Hotch moves aside to let Alex work on saving their friend’s life, and all of them pretend the water on his face is from Reid’s skin.

“He’s alive,” JJ soothes, taking Hotch’s hand in hers for just a second, then letting go. He lets her. “It’s over.”

But Morgan’s hanging back, Emily’s still standing as a wolf, and she can’t help but wonder if JJ is wrong. They’ve changed too much for this ever to be over.


	20. All These Things That I’ve Done

They’re all treated for exposure. They’re all treated for dehydration. They’re all treated for the kind of damage caused by a body pushed to and beyond its limits, canine or otherwise. Hotch knows that they’re all the same with regards to those treatments.

He also knows where they differ. And he knows what’s not going on their records.

He knows about the Levonogestrel pills the women were given, and which neither of them will talk about. He knows about the very quiet offer of a rape test they were all offered. He knows that every one of his team firmly declined. He knows about the damage to Rossi’s leg, and to JJ’s face, and the possibility of damage to Reid’s lungs. And finally, finally, he knows about the STI tests they’d all been offered, and that not a single one of those tests will be formalized once completed. He knows Reid accepted.

After that, he hadn’t had the courage to ask about the others.

Every single one of these hurts, he knows, because it’s his job to. And he blames himself for each and every one.

 

* * *

 

Morgan finds Emily sitting on the chair outside the clinical room where JJ is being stitched up, and she’s not alone. He pauses in the hallway, watching as Emily bows her head forward, hair curtaining in front of her face, and her shoulders curved inwards. She looks distraught. It’s not a look he’s ever seen on her before. The man sitting next to her carefully puts his arm around her, and she lets him.

Morgan backs away and leaves them alone.

He could go find Hotch. He knows he’s not far, off getting the same dose of IV fluids they’d all been subjected to. Rossi is probably still alternating between flirting with the nurse assigned to his care, or bickering angrily with the doctor about the cast he’s now stuck with.

Reid is…

Morgan walks slowly to the cafeteria and sits on his own, flicking through a magazine without reading a word. Then, he turns his cell on. He wonders if Hotch has done this yet.

He dials.

“Hey, Babygirl.”

 

* * *

 

Reid’s alone for hours. Not his team’s fault. He’d asked the doctors to keep everyone away, and they’d done an admirable job of doing so. Reid’s assuming that leeway will vanish once his team begin reassembling and the effects of shock and trauma begin to recede. But, until then, he treasures the quiet and the time to recollect himself. He determinedly doesn’t delve into his, admittedly hazy, memories of the past few days. He doesn’t think of JJ or Morgan or Hotch or the wolf that he can still feel inside himself. He doesn’t think of Charlotte, or the emptiness in his mind where she should be. He doesn’t think of the crippling and confusing whirl of grief her death had brought.

He just tries to remember who he is and why that matters.

When Emily walks in, she doesn’t know and he’s not surprised. Nor does he ask her to leave. She won’t anyway. He’s almost frustrated she’s not JJ… he could make JJ leave.

He tries anyway.

“You should get a rape kit done,” he says, and his voice is cold. She doesn’t flinch. “I was clean before but I don’t know about—”

“Nope,” she says, and flops into the chair next to his bed, reaching for the magazine a well-meaning nurse had stuck there to ‘entertain’ him while they monitor his lungs for signs of distress. “Well, no to the kit. You know they’ll find nothing useful. You on the other hand…”

“She’s dead. What good will it do.” He’d planned to be cruel, to bristle at her before she retreated to save her own feelings. Somehow, he’s lost the energy to do so between her crossing the room to his bed and her sitting down.

“Nothing that happened out there was your fault.” The rolled up magazine taps his knee sharply as she speaks, and she leans forward, eyes intent. “Nothing. You hear me?”

She’s wrong.

“JJ?” he asks, because he hasn’t seen her yet and it’s easier to ask about her than Aaron, who he’d hurt, or Morgan, who he’d broken.

Emily’s mouth curls into an unhappy line and she’s looking at him like a profiler. “She’s fine,” she says, and she’s not lying so Reid relaxes, just a little. “You nearly drowned—”

“Drowned.” He doesn’t mean to sound so sharp this time. It’s disconcerting, suddenly having no control over his tone. “They don’t use the term ‘nearly drowned’ anymore. It’s actually considered drowned if you’re submersed for an extended period of time, whether or not death is resultant.”

“Whatever, Reid. Pedant. You know, I’ll be so fucking glad to leave here. I think I hate snow now.”

“You shouldn’t.” He reaches out to curl his fingers over hers, wrapped around the magazine, despite the shiver of fear and something almost like revulsion that follows the touch of their skin. “I’m alive because of the cold. The mammalian diving reflex is triggered by sudden submersion in cold water, lowering both heart rate and breathing and rationing blood to vital parts of the body including—”

She hits him with the magazine again. “Yep,” she says, standing and smiling. “Good to know you’re fine.”

He’s not, but he’s always been good at illusions.

 

* * *

 

They try to stop him once and only once. He just looks at them. He doesn’t have any trouble after that. Well, not from the nurses anyway.

He slips into Reid’s room, noting the ease with which he moves silently now. Perhaps not everything different is… terrible. Perhaps. He’ll pass judgement after he’s gotten his team home and safe and held his son. _Jack_. God, he misses him.

Not long now.

The room is pitch black except for the flicker of lights on the machines, thick drapes pulled tight across the windows, locking the elements out. When he taps the light, it glares and blinds him for an instant, illuminating the hard-backed orange chair, Reid’s bags packed and ready by the door and… the empty bed.

He hesitates for just a second, and there’s a low growl. _Shit._ “Spence?” he calls softly, clicking the door shut, pacing carefully around the bed. Side-on, shoulders hunched, eyes lowered. _Not a threat, not a threat, I’m not a threat._

The wolf is huddled in the corner, eyes haunted, and even as Hotch pauses, his muzzle draws back into a snarl. Hotch holds his hands out, smoothing his face into the semblance of calm, and crouches. Reid’s eyes flicker to his hands, darting up back to his face, and Hotch waits.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, because he’s not entirely sure what’s happening here. Charlotte is dead. She’s _dead_. Reid’s safe.

So why…?

Another growl. Hotch is _done_ with this, right now. He’s not going to lose him again. He shifts, and flattens his belly to the tiles. _“Spence, it’s okay,”_ he says, inching forward, claws clicking. Reid watches blankly. Hotch can’t feel anything from him, not a thing. Empty again. _Why? “It’s me. It’s Aaron.”_

_“She’s dead,”_ Reid responds, and there’s a hazy kind of disorientation to his mind. _“She’s dead. She’s gone. Don’t you care?”_

He chooses his words carefully. _“I care about what she’s done to you.”_

_“You don’t care at all. Not like she did.”_

The door snicks slightly, and Hotch sees Reid stiffen. Hotch doesn’t turn, but he smells wolf. Unfamiliar wolf. His hackles rise and he inches to the left, between the newcomer and his agent. _“Just talk to him, Agent,”_ says the newcomer. Hotch vaguely recognises the doctor. _“It’s a shock when a leader dies, always a shock. We don’t like to be alone. No wolf is an island.”_

_“He was fine before.”_

_“We’d just dragged him out of a river before. Some things take time to sink in.”_

Reid’s eyes are closed and he tucks his muzzle against the creamy swirl of his chest. Hotch can see him trembling, sides beginning to heave as he panics. _“Spencer,”_ Hotch tries again, and his eyes snap open, regarding him warily. _“Stop. Stop pulling away from me. I can’t… I can’t bear it. I searched so long for you.”_

Reid blinks, and like a light switching on, Hotch becomes _aware_ of him. Wary and hurt, but there. _“You’re a werewolf now, because of me. All of you. How am I worth that? What kind of lives will we have now? There’s no fixing this!”_

_“You didn’t do this. She did this. Stop blaming yourself.”_

It’s a weird sensation, having someone laugh in his mind, even when that laugh is harsh and fake. _“I don’t remember the hotel. I don’t. I remember being in your arms, and then I remember washing you from my skin. And you know what else? I can feel your guilt. You stink of guilt. It’s a little hypocritical of you to try and tell me none of this—not JJ or Morgan or Emily—none of this is my fault, when all you’re doing is blaming yourself.”_ He pauses, and his voice turns sad and confused again. _“I know I don’t love her. But my brain thinks it does, and I don’t know how to make it stop.”_

Hotch settles, barely a nose length from Reid, and thinks. The silence yawns. Reid watches him carefully. _“It’s not real love,”_ Hotch says finally, and it sounds stupid even when he says it. _“Do you know how I know?”_ Reid doesn’t answer. Hotch isn’t discouraged. _“Because… because we saved you using real love. Not this forced kind she’s pushed on you. JJ and Morgan and Rossi, they broke free because of it. Emily was never trapped because of it. And I chose this form, entirely of my own free will, because of it.”_

He waits and waits and in the quiet that follows, Reid makes the first move. He slips forward and tucks himself against Hotch’s front, tucking his muzzle into Hotch’s fur. _“Prove it,”_ he says, but there’s almost a smile in his voice. Almost. So close. He creeps into Hotch’s mind, slipping in like a cautious smoke and tasting the flavours of Hotch’s thoughts.

So Hotch does. He lets him in. And he shows him how much he cares. _“I love you,”_ he says, and Reid believes him. _“And you’re not alone. You don’t need Charlotte. I’m with you.”_

_“And I’m with you,”_ Reid agrees quietly, and Hotch feels the last trace of the woman drain from him. Free.

Finally.

 

* * *

 

They find the hikers among the wolves taken. Rossi is by Hotch’s side when the youngest boy and his brother walk into the cabin to say thank you. They’re flying home, accompanied by their shell-shocked mother, and one of the sheriff’s men who’d quietly offered to go with them to try and explain the ‘situation’ to those family members who couldn’t be excluded from knowing.

Rossi doesn’t envy that job. It’s an uncomfortable reminder of the job many of them have upon going home. Hotch and Jack. JJ and Will, and Henry. All of them and Garcia. Strauss.

He’s pretty sure they’re going to end up committed. He hopes he’s not room-sharing with Reid. The kids been even twitchier than usual since all of this. Quieter too, which Rossi would normally call a boon, but now it just makes him sad.

Hotch spends the next twenty-four hours fielding phone calls from Strauss and other higher-ups, all completely bewildered as to how six field agents all went no-contact for almost eighty hours. Rossi’s not hugely sure on the cover story they’d come up with yet, but he knows it includes them being separated during the blizzard and ends with a nice little leeway about Reid’s dip in the river and JJ pissing off a hungry dog. He’s also eighty percent sure it doesn’t include giant wolves, although he does wonder just how much of Charlotte’s doings made it in.

Morgan spends two hours in the hospital on the phone with a hysterical Garcia, who then demands to be passed around to the rest of her ‘family’ to ensure that they’re still breathing. “Sir!” she shrieks when Rossi gingerly takes the phone from the grinning JJ. “Are you okay? Your leg! Can you walk? Well, I’m sure you can walk, but probably not well and _oooohhhh_ does this mean you’ll be staying at the office with me? Because I don’t do that anymore, not after Gideon and then Reid and my office isn’t big enough for two, and I was so scared and my god my god—”

He cuts her off. “Penelope.”

Silence. Then a very squeaked, “Yes, sir?”

“Thank you for your concern. I’m fine. And I promise not to invade your space.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“…. Now, would you like to speak to, oh, let’s see… hey, Hotch!” He can’t hold back the smile at Hotch’s wide eyed look of shock as the phone begins to babble into his ear, and he doesn’t really try. The horrors of the past few days already seem distant.

For some of them, anyway.

 

* * *

 

The jet ride home is silent. JJ watches her team carefully. She wonders how much they remember. Her own memory is patchy and fragmented and mostly consists of someone telling her how much they love her and Charlotte lunging at her face. Overshadowing it all, every time she closes her eyes she sees Spence tumbling off that ridge, and every time he’s looking straight at her like he’s begging her to save him.

She watches him now, closest of all. Emily seems fine. She’s laughing, if a little forced, and her gaze alternates from Reid to Morgan evenly. Hotch is silent, but that’s not a surprise. Rossi is complaining, and that’s hardly a surprise either, especially when the jet hits turbulence and his cast bounces on the couch. Morgan returns Emily’s jokes, but his skin is pale and he doesn’t make eye contact.

Reid sits apart. When Hotch walks past and reaches down to brush his hand against the other man’s shoulder, Reid flinches away.

JJ worries.

 

* * *

 

“Mandatory therapy, one month. Every one of you.”

Hotch doesn’t argue with Strauss. They need it anyway, despite every one of them trying to pretend they don’t. He can feel the fractures spreading through their team, even though Rossi and Prentiss are doing their best to hold them together. He offers to go home with JJ that first night to try and explain it to Will, but JJ shakes her head.

“It’s probably better I… don’t,” she replies sadly, and he knows what she means just as much as he knows how hard that choice is.

He wants to offer to go home with Reid that first night, but one look at the cornered expression Reid shoots him when he walks up to him by his car, and he reconsiders that. He needs space. They both do. But he does say one thing. “Nothing that happened up there affects us,” he says, and he knows he’s lying even as he says it. What’s worse, he knows Reid knows it too. The morning at the hotel floats over them, and the quiet voice that points out to Hotch that _he was sick and out of his mind. You weren’t. You know what that means you did to him_. “We can work through this.”

“Yes,” Reid says robotically, and leaves without another word.

Hotch goes home to Jack and doesn’t tell him. _Yeah, by the way Jack, your dad is a werewolf now._

How could he?

Life goes on and they pretend nothing happened.

 

* * *

 

Her team are being fucking idiots. She can’t deal with their idiocy all at once, and it’s made twice as hard by them all being off active duty until they’re cleared by the shrink, so she picks the one who needs it most. Well, needs it most _and_ who she feels qualified to help. There’s a look in Reid’s eyes these days that she’s ashamed to say she can’t even begin to know how to help.

His house is frighteningly quiet when she almost batters the door down, despite her knowing that he’s home. It’s not that she can smell or hear him consciously, it’s just… knowing. The awareness of a living being hovering nearby, one that she’s attuned to. Only one though.

Hmm.

“Answer the goddamn door, Derek,” she shouts. “Or I’ll come in the window, and don’t think I won’t.”

He opens the door and she looks down immediately. There’s no dog at his legs, slobbering on her pants and leaving copper fur all over her as he fawns for attention.

“I’m going to bed,” Morgan says, despite being dressed for jogging, and he doesn’t look at her while he does so. “What do you want, Prentiss?”

“Clooney?” she asks, and she doesn’t keep looking because the scent of dog on the premises is two weeks old.

“Mom’s got him,” Morgan says after a beat, and now he does look at her. “He fucking hates me now, Emily. I got home and he almost attacked me. I lost my fucking dog and…” His voice hitches. “What more do we have to have taken from us because of that _cunt_ _?”_

Damn.

“Come run with me,” she says instead, and she makes certain he knows damn sure she doesn’t mean on two legs. His face turns cold and masklike. He’s doing exactly the same as the rest of them—pretending nothing has changed when everything has. “I’m serious. It’s… Morgan, it’s nothing like being on the mountain. But it’s lonely. It’s not supposed to be.” He hesitates and there’s longing in his eyes. “Please.”

He nods and locks the door beside her and they walk to her car together. And when they finally reach the outskirts of DC, under the cool moon with the Potomac flowing nearby, it’s not lonely. The city is just as alive as the forest, perhaps more so, and they spend hours rediscovering this.

But nor is it everything it should be. Not yet.

Not with only two.

 

* * *

 

JJ gets home from work and the house is silent. She reaches automatically for her gun, and when she finds Will sitting at the kitchen table, it’s almost anticlimactic.

“Where’s Henry?” she asks, and her heart is hammering. She wants to shrink away, cower back. Hide from this moment, from what she knows is coming. It was only a matter of time. _I love you, but you’ve changed. We’re not the same anymore. I’m taking Henry. I can’t do this anymore._

“Your mom’s,” Will says in his soft accent, and his eyes are sad. “Jen, sit.”

No. She stands. She can’t remember how to relax. “Will, please don’t,” she begins, and her eyes are already welling up. It’s been a month. A damn month since that forest and that case, and she knows she’s been distant, moody, snappy. She can’t help it. Everything is so loud now, so vivid, and her skin feels like it sits wrong on her body. There’s just so much of _everything_ racing in her veins. She can’t bear to be still, and she’s been nothing but. And most of all, she’s been… alone. Alone in her mind and her soul and it hurts.

“I’m not breaking up with you,” he says, and now he looks worried. “Stop panicking, love.”

Oh. _Oh._ She sits.

“Now,” Will says, and folds his hands behind his head, acting casual. “You’re going to tell me what happened on that mountain. The truth. Please.”

So, she does.

He walks out. He hits something. It takes forever for him to come back, and when he does he looks ill. She knows he thinks she’s crazy. Before he can voice the words, she stands and shifts. It’s been a month since this. Since wearing this form. She’d started to wonder if she’s crazy too, but everything sharpens and dulls all at once, and her claws click on the tiles, and she’s peering up at him and his eyes are bugging out of his head.

“Holy shit,” he says, and takes a step back. “You’re…”

She shifts back and curls her arms around her belly, protecting herself from the blow that’s coming. “A monster…” she finishes and looks at the ground. How can they tell Henry? How can she be a mom when there’s a monster inside her? Look what Charlotte did. Look what Charlotte _was_. How is she any better?

A cool hand brushes her cheek, her chin, lifting her gaze to meet his. “Beautiful,” he says firmly, and pulls her close. “No matter what. We’ll… we’ll work through this.”

She cries and he doesn’t let go.

 

* * *

 

Sleep never comes easy to David Rossi. Not before, and definitely not now. Especially not now that his hearing is sharp enough to hear Hotch thinking from his office, or Morgan being angsty, or Garcia… Garciaing.

Sharp enough to hear the pad of paws across his back lawn even before the motion sensor lights click onto and illuminate the white wolf gleaming gold against the black-green, tail low and ears flat. He can practically taste her misery from here.

“Damnit,” he mutters, and reaches for his crutches. Duty calls.

JJ is still standing dejected on the lawn when he hobbles his way out there. She watches him, eyes glinting. “Alright, Jennifer?” he asks softly, lowering himself onto the porch steps and leaning his crutches next to him. She slips up next to him, claws scrabbling on the smooth wood, then shifts and settles on the step.

“I’m fine, Dave,” she says, and peers upwards at the cloud-covered moon. “Are you? You’re the only one who hasn’t even flinched from this whole thing. You just… accepted it.”

“You came here in the middle of the night because I’m too calm?” he asks incredulously. “I’m peachy, JJ. Just peachy.”

She’s silent for the longest time. “Reid’s not and I don’t know how to help him,” she says finally. “Morgan’s not and he won’t let me help him. Hotch isn’t and I _can’t_ help him. I feel so… helpless. Surrounded by my family’s misery and drowning in it.”

“JJ.” He’s firm as he cuts her off. “I’m okay. I plan to continue being okay. But if at any point that changes, I promise I will tell you.”

She nods. “Okay. Okay. Thank you.”

He sleeps properly that night for the first time since Tongass.

 

* * *

 

Their month of therapy is up. Emily’s managed to get Morgan out of the house more nights than not, and he’s slowly starting to heal. She knows he’s barely spoken to Reid, and she’d be concerned about the reflection of that on his mental state, but she also knows that Reid’s barely speaking to anyone outside of work. She gets Rossi out despite him not being able to shift until the cast is off. He sits on the grass and watches her and Morgan tussle and roll about the hill, their fur covered in grass and mud and leaving paw-prints all over his cast when the wander over to paw _hello_ at him. They get Hotch out and she can’t take pride in that, because it’s entirely Rossi who does so. Hotch watches them as a human for twice as long as she feels is needed before finally slinking into his wolf form and padding after them.

He doesn’t join in the fun, but he does quietly acknowledge them via his mind, and it’s enough. For now.

They get JJ out. Really JJ gets herself out. Emily tells her where they go and what they do, and JJ shrugs non-committedly, and asks Reid if he’s going. Reid doesn’t answer. That night, JJ arrives and Will is with her. To their shock, JJ doesn’t even hesitate before shifting into her wolf form and bouncing after Morgan with only a cursory bump of her nose against Will’s palm. Will sits next to Rossi and the two speak in quiet voices.

“Where’s Henry?” Emily hears Rossi ask when their voices lift and the tension has leeched out of both their shoulders. She wonders just how much JJ told Will. She wonders whether Rossi filled in the gaps.

“With Spencer,” Will says calmly, to Emily’s shock. “JJ was insistent. Said he needed to see his god-pa. I think it was more for Spencer’s sake than Henry’s.” He’s watching JJ try to coax Hotch into a game, and there’s love in his eyes that she’s so fucking reassured to see. Maybe they can come back from this. “Is he going to be okay? Spencer that is. I’ve seen the look he had before… it’s not good, Dave.”

“He’ll be fine,” says Rossi firmly, and digs in his cast with a stick he’d picked up before tossing it in Emily’s direction and winking. “We’ll help him, when he lets us.” She glares.

_Fuck off, Dave. If you say fetch, I’m going to see how far up your ass I can ram that sti—_

“Fetch,” Rossi says sweetly, and she dives at him with a mock growl.

 

* * *

 

Garcia rocks up on his doorstep, and she’s as stubborn as Prentiss about leaving. “Okay,” she says, pushing through and dropping a bunch of books and papers onto his coffee table. “So, you guys have been, no offence, but super frickin’ weird since you came back from Alaska. Like mega-weird. And no one will tell me anything so I went out and I’ve been looking stuff up and I have theories and you’re going to sit your sexy ass down and listen to me because I am _sick_ of not knowing what’s going on, do you understand? _Sick_ of it because you are my _family_ and I need to help you and none of you are _letting_ me.”

Uh oh. “Pen,” Morgan says cautiously, but he sits down despite that because she’s holding a book that looks heavy and she’s got terrifying aim when she’s mad.

She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and before he can stop her pretty much shouts, “So I’m thinking aliens!”

“Aliens,” he deadpans. She laughs, shakily.

“No,” she says finally, and flips the book open. “That was just… you know how when you want a little favour, you ask a big favour first so they feel okay about the little favour…”

“Pen.”

“…and then so this kind of thing I thought go with something ridiculous so that…”

“Penelope!”

“…it doesn’t sound quite as insane when I ask if you’re a werewolf.”

Silence. Morgan is pretty sure he can hear their hearts beating it’s gone so fucking silent. Actually, he can hear their hearts beating, but he doesn’t really want to think about that. And everything he was going to say, every casual joke or sly comment to deflect attention, fails him all at once. He just stares at her, and her face is red and her eyes are wavering.

She’s not shouting anymore, or speaking rapidly. Her voice is quiet and low and scared and it hurts him. “You’re all so reserved. I looked up those hikers and only two of them came home, the rest stayed in that town. Like, they up and moved their whole lives there, on a whim. And they were all super into the occult and I found blog posts where they talked about becoming werewolves and all this weird stuff. And you guys came back and you’re all bitten and scratched up, and I can’t sneak up on any of you anymore without you hearing me coming from miles away and Rossi’s weird ability to tell when I have cookies is even weirder because now it’s almost supernatural and you got rid of Clooney and you _love_ Clooney…”

“You got werewolves from that?” he asks, impressed despite himself.

“That and…” Garcia wipes the back of her hand across her eyes. “That and Emily asked me to take Sergio and the poor cat was a mess when she brought him. She was almost bawling, I was actually bawling, and he was acting like he was terrified of her.”

He takes two steps forward before he can stop himself, and she doesn’t flinch away. She just falls into his arms like she’s been waiting a month for this, and maybe she has been. He’d forgotten, so wrapped up in his own misery, that everyone around him had been hurt too. “You are an absolute genius,” he says into her hair and she’s crying properly now.

“So, I guess that’s a yes to werewolf,” she mumbles into his shirt, and he feels her shiver. “That’s weird. But okay. I can deal with weird. All of you? Even JJ? Even… Reid?”

“His paws are odd colours,” Morgan says, because he can’t think of anything else to say, and Garcia makes a noise that’s torn between a squeal and a shriek. Then she says something that he can’t comprehend, not at first. “What?” he asks stupidly, and she pulls out his arms and stares determinedly at him.

“I said,” she enunciates clearly. “That I want in. You guys don’t get to do this. You’re all pulling away from each other and if I have to be… all… wolf-y… to help you, then god help me I will learn to type with paws.”

Well, shit. Hotch is really not going to like this.

 

* * *

 

For the past two weeks, Hotch has told Jessica he’s being kept at the office late. Then, he’s left at his usual time, taken to wolf form, and wandered the streets alone. Particular streets. He knows he’s not the only one wandering them. Reid’s scent is faint, worn over by other dogs and humans and cars and, once, another wolf. But it’s there, and it makes Hotch’s heart ache because he knows how much it hurts to be alone, and Reid is isolating himself.

But when he knocks at his door, Reid doesn’t answer. And when he texts, there’s no reply. He doesn’t know how to reach him without pushing boundaries he’s not even sure are there.

On this night, he’s actually staying late, and when he goes to stand, Strauss is at his door. “Your team’s leave is over,” she says quietly, and steps in to close the door behind her. He stiffens because, ever since Alaska, closed doors have felt deadly. She smells like pen ink and perfume and… worry. Strain. He rests his hands on his desk so she can’t see them tremble. “The therapy reports hit my desk today.”

“You’re clearing them for active duty?” he asks, and he’s scared he knows the answer because she looks grim.

“Agents Jareau, Rossi, Prentiss, and you, yes,” she says. “But you knew that. You know your team, Aaron, you know them better than I do. And you know Dr. Reid and Agent Morgan aren’t fit for active duty yet.”

“They need to get back in the field,” he argues without changing his tone. “Being in the field again is what will help them, not sitting in the office—”

“You won’t even tell me what really happened up there,” she snaps. “Oh yes, I know that crock and bull story Dave fed me about getting caught in the blizzard isn’t anywhere near what happened. I could have told that even if the psychologist assigned to your team hadn’t already recommended treatment for PTSD for Agent Morgan, or…”

“Or what?” he says coolly, and she glances at her hands. She’s holding something. An envelope. He covers his mouth with his hand, as though hiding a cough, and he can taste the barest hint of Reid’s scent in the air.

The tremble returns.

“The reports aren’t all that I received today,” she says, and holds the envelope out. “I think he knew what that report was going to say, Aaron. I think you knew it, too. I’ve already accepted his resignation. I’m sorry. In all honestly, I am sorry. But if he isn’t in the state to run rings about his psychologist, he isn’t in the state to be here.”

He takes the envelope. _Resignation of Dr. Spencer Reid enclosed_.

Almost on autopilot that night, he goes to his apartment and knocks on the door, but there’s no answer. No matter. He has a key.

He finds the room quiet and empty. There’s another folded sheet of paper on the table, and he picks it up with steady hands. The room smells like Reid. He inhales that scent and something in him whines miserably and urges him to slink over to the couch, curl up by it and try to cling to what remains of the man he loves, even as that man pushes him away. When he unfolds the paper, there’s two words written in a familiar hand.

_I’m sorry._

And that’s all there is.


	21. Wolf Bite

_“This is Dr. Spencer Reid. I can’t come to the phone right now, so please leave a detailed message and I will return your call as soon as possible.”_

_“This is Dr. Spencer Reid. I can’t come to the phone right now, so please leave a detailed message and I will return your call as soon as possible.”_

_“We're sorry; you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.”_

 

* * *

 

The heat of the bar is like a physical blow when Emily walks in, and she immediately starts sweating under the layers of clothes she’s wearing. She hates this place. No one looks around, but she knows they’re all focused on her. Ears and noses and senses beyond those… she can feel their attention burning on the back of her neck as she walks up and slides onto a stool, nonchalantly shrugging her outer coat from her shoulders and slinging it across the next seat. She smiles at the young barkeep, and he smiles back with far too many teeth. She returns that, and when she opens her mouth to do so, information floods her mind.

She can’t count the number of times these new abilities have come in handy. Not without an extra seven hands at least. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t wish they’d acquired them in a manner less likely to leave them this fucked up.

“You’re not here for a drink, are you, fed?” the barkeep asks, his mouth thinning into an unhappy line. She doesn’t break eye contact as she slides the photo across the polished wood. He doesn’t look at it. “Never seen him before in my life,” he lies, and she sighs. Then, she tenses as cold washes against her back, the wind blowing in a familiar scent.

“No one here will help you, Agent Prentiss,” says a quiet voice. “Come on. You’re making the locals uncomfortable.”

She spins on the stool and smirks as she picks up her coat. _Jackpot_. “Alex,” she says, pulling the coat on and following him out into the weak excuse for an Alaskan summer. “Where is he?” Alex doesn’t look at her either, and her heart sinks. _Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, we’d know if he was dead, not when we’re so close…_

“I’m not helping you either,” Alex says. “It’s not our custom. Those who come here, come here for a reason.”

“So, he is here then. Why even come see me at all if you’re not going to take me to him?”

He touches her arm and his eyes are locked on something behind her. When she turns, she catches the tail end of a dark shape darting low to the ground out from the alley by the bar and vanishing into the nearby trees. “Come on,” he says again. “It’s his choice. Only his. No one will help you find him unless he comes to you first. Might as well kill some time between now and that message reaching him.”

She raises an eyebrow. _Cocky little shit._ “Oh, and your idea of killing time is?”

Alex’s mouth slips into a smile, and she’d forgotten how green his eyes were. “Well, we can go back in the bar now John has had time to duck out without you following him. If… if you want a drink I guess. Or we can go to the… library?”

Christ. He’s Reid. He’s just a slightly less awkward Reid. She rolls her eyes and leans against his car, thoughtful. They’ve waited six months to find him.

What’s a few more hours?

 

* * *

 

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. The dreams, sure. They’re not real dreams anyway, just flashes of… knowing. Remembering maybe. Sometimes, he suspects they’re cravings. But when they start leeching into his waking hours? When he’s stepping off the jet into the Georgian summer and the heat makes his heart thump and his skin itch, or when he’s following Rossi down a dirt track in a forest and every part of him is hyper-focused on the hum of the forest and aching to shift… that’s when things start getting harder.

He dreams of snow and, when he’s awake, he longs for winter. He’s starting to get the horrible sensation that maybe, just maybe, there was a reason so many of the people turned had never left Alaska.

_“You feel it too, don’t you?”_ Rossi asks one day when they’re moving silently together through the closest thing they have to the forest they’re both dreaming of. _“Is it all of us?”_

_“If I saw them to ask them, I would,”_ Hotch replies snidely, and tries to pretend it doesn’t bother him that they run as two now instead of six.

Seven.

They cross the familiar scents, and Hotch feels Rossi’s huff of delight as he hastens. _“Do I smell cupcakes?”_ he calls, and Hotch rolls his eyes. Morgan’s leaning against his car, human, and Garcia is sitting cross-legged nearby. She brightens when she sees them.

Morgan doesn’t.

“So, Pen rocks up on my doorstep this afternoon and tells me Emily’s gone on vacation,” Morgan says, and Hotch notes he looks tired. “I don’t think I really need to guess where.”

_“Europe,”_ Hotch says coolly, and shifts. “She’s going to visit her mother while she’s working in London.”

“How’s white collar treating you?” Rossi asks, shifting as well and gravitating towards the sealed container perched on Morgan’s hood. “Bored out of your mind yet?”

“Bullshit she’s in London,” Morgan snaps, ignoring Rossi. “Come on, I know I’m not the only one obsessing over snow and fucking forests. It’s gotten worse. I mean, it started when Reid—” He stops and Hotch doesn’t let his gaze waver.

“You think she’s in Alaska?” Garcia asks, sliding her bracelets off her wrist and folding her hands in her lap. “I mean… why? If she’s looking for Reid, there’s absolutely no record of him flying over there and well, would he go back? Why would he go back? That’s the _last_ place he’d go, isn’t it?”

“Course he’s in Alaska,” Rossi says, licking icing off of his fingers and turning back. “Just because you two are content to pretend the kid is in Vegas playing the Strip, doesn’t mean the rest of us are that stupid. Are we going back out? I’ve got my show set to record, I’m set for the next hour.”

“But I checked every flight!” Garcia protests, and shifts at the same time Morgan does. Hotch flinches. He hates that she chose this. He’s so fucking relieved that she had the _option_ to choose this. Mostly, he just hates that he can’t forgive Morgan for giving her this. Even with his reasoning. _If you won’t turn her, I will, Hotch. She wants this. She’ll get it. We’re not the only wolves in DC, and she knows that._

The lesser of two evils perhaps, but still an evil as far as he’s concerned.

_“There is definitely no record of him flying or driving into Canada, and there’s no way he’s travelling under an assumed name because come on, that’s so illegal he’d probably arrest himself for thinking of it,”_ Garcia finishes, and nudges the now wolf-again Rossi with her shoulder happily. They don’t talk about the ones missing, but they’re all aware.

_“I doubt he flew or drove,”_ Rossi replies, and bounds away. _“You’re not the only one running, Morgan. Only difference is, he ran towards his problems. Not away.”_

_“I got a transfer, Dave. I didn’t run. I’m like, two fucking floors down. I still have lunch with Garcia most days! If you’re so shitty with me for leaving, why not bitch at JJ? I mean, the Pentagon? She didn’t even warn us, she just left. Or what about Hotch? He didn’t do a damn thing to get Reid back.”_

_“He’s an adult,”_ Hotch says, bristling at Morgan’s pent-up-anger. _“I can’t stop him.”_

_“You didn’t even try.”_

Something had broken the day Reid had walked out of their lives. Something fragile and tentative that they’d only just started to repair. But, he’s starting to doubt it’s fixable, no matter how far Emily goes to try.

 

* * *

 

They end up exactly where Emily had assumed they would as soon as Alex had reached over her to pay the barkeep, and the brush of her arm against her shoulder had set her heart racing.

It’s not like they don’t have the time to kill.

He’s shy and focused and, for a few hours, she forgets everything that’s been haunting them and just loses herself in his touch. JJ leaving, Morgan transferring out to try and avoid his guilt over Reid fucking off into the middle of nowhere. All the bullshit over Garcia, and Hotch’s absolute fury when they’d gone ahead and done it anyway. Emily doesn’t blame Morgan for what he did. Hell, if he’d refused, she can’t guarantee she wouldn’t have just turned her herself. If there’s one thing Emily learnt and learnt well from those three days in Tongass, it’s that better the wolf you know than the wolf you don’t.

And then there’s Hotch’s misery that he hides really, really well to everyone who doesn’t spend a couple of hours a week sharing thoughts with him.

Alex falls asleep and she drifts in and out of a cat-like nap, senses sharp and attuned to the unfamiliar surroundings. The scent of his room, the sounds of life outside, the calm awareness of his heart and his body.

The sound of the front door opening.

She shifts and she’s by the door of his room in seconds, arched and silent, waiting to strike.

“It’s okay, Em,” Alex says sleepily, rolling over. The sheets slip from his body, baring him to her again. She only spares him a glance before fixing her gaze back on the door and the utter silence on the other sound. A wolf-like silence.

Oh.

“He has a key,” Alex adds, and she nudges the door open to find Reid standing in the dark, human, and eyeing her cautiously. The light from the bedside lamp through the doorway catches his eyes and they flicker gold-green with an eerie reflection. There’s very little that’s human in them, despite his form.

And he smells wild.

_“Bout goddamn time,”_ she says, stepping once towards him. _“Thought you’d gotten thrown into a zoo or something.”_

_Or something,_ he sends back, and smiles. She’d know that smile anywhere. She relaxes.

It’s him.

He shifts. _“Run with me?”_

_“Thought you’d never ask.”_

 

* * *

 

Having Emily by his side is a painful reminder of what he’s been working to regain, but it’s the sweetest kind of pain imaginable. _“I’ve missed you,”_ he admits finally, when they’ve been running through the woods in silence and he can feel her suspicion growing. _“How is everyone?”_

_“You really want to ask that question?”_ she answers, and stops. He can feel her worry, her sadness, overlaid with her delight at being with him again. _“Why did you run, Spence? Why did you leave? We would have helped you.”_

_“I’m not running,”_ he answers, and presses his muzzle to her ears, flicking his tongue over her silky fur and memorising her scent lovingly. _“I’m… learning.”_

_“Learning what? How to weave baskets and make daisy chains? What can you possibly be learning here that you can’t learn at home, with us?”_

_“How to be myself.”_

She’s there for three days. When she leaves, he doesn’t follow. She asks him if he’s ever coming home when she hugs him goodbye. He wonders if she’s going to tell Hotch where he is. He wonders how he feels about that.

“Of course,” he says quietly. “I always intended to.”

But not yet.

 

* * *

 

Prentiss comes back and she says nothing about where she’s been, but her clothes smell of ice and wind and… Spencer.

They all know.

_“Hotch,”_ she says to him one day when they’re alone and a quiet has fallen between them. _“He’s coming home. When he’s ready.”_

Hotch doesn’t listen. He can’t bear the hope.

 

* * *

 

Ever since their weird little pack had fractured down the middle, JJ spends more time moving around the streets of DC alone than she does with the others. Being with them… it’s an uncomfortable reminder that they just keep failing each other. Sometimes, Garcia finds her. Morgan had, once, but they’d quickly pointed out that, while the two women can at least somewhat move around without notice, there’s no damn way Morgan’s not causing panic-attacks every time someone catches a glimpse of him.

Emily came twice, but JJ knows she’s still pissed that she left. When she stopped showing up, JJ didn’t push the issue.

It’s eight months after Tongass when she comes across a scent she knows. She doesn’t follow it. She slips back to her car, shifts, and she calls Hotch. “Hey, Hotch? It’s JJ. Good, yeah. It’s, um… he’s back.”

 

* * *

 

The apartment building they drive to isn’t nice, nor is it shabby. It’s firmly in between, and Hotch examines it critically.

“How did you find him?” he asks Prentiss as she throws the car into park and leans back in the driver’s seat.

“Well, my sense of smell is like a gazillion times better,” she teases, smiling. He raises an eyebrow. “… Garcia. How do you think I found him?”

He unsnaps his seatbelt. Takes a deep breath. “Are you coming?”

“Nope.” She gives his arm a shove. “Go on. Big boy pants on.”

He’s starting to suspect that maybe his team doesn’t respect him as much as they should.

 

* * *

 

He knocks. There’s no answer. So, he waits. And waits. And waits.

Silence.

Dejected, he slips out of the building and walks towards the car. He can see Emily with her arms behind her head, snoozing. The wind shifts. So does he, within a second of catching the familiar scent. Down the alley next to the building, he slinks along the bins and bags of garbage, senses going haywire. He snuffs the air. His paw nudges a bottle.

Reid slips out and watches him warily.

Hotch stops and just… _looks._ Looks at him, properly this time. Looks at him like he’s never going to get the chance to look again, because at this instant he realizes his heart didn’t stop when Reid walked out, and maybe, just maybe, he might not get another chance.

Hazel eyes watch him from a narrow face, large ears pricked forward. He’s standing slightly side-on, his tail stiff and still. Muscles tensed, legs ready to run. There’s a collar hanging loosely around his neck, the silver-plate on the side catching the light as it sways slightly in the wind.

_“Nice collar,”_ Hotch says, and steps forward once. Reid lowers his head and Hotch pauses. His hackles are up. _“Tartan? Really?”_

_“It was the only one in my size,”_ Reid says softly, his fur settling. _“And spending a night with the municipal dog warden is an experience that you only ever wish to enjoy once.”_

_“Whose number is on the tag?”_ he asks curiously, sitting on his haunches and yawning. Anything to show that he is calm, he’s fine, that he isn’t rattling out of his fur with tension.

_“Mine,”_ Emily says, padding up behind them. _“That was a fun day. Wasn’t it fun, Spencer?”_

_“For you.”_

Emily had known he was back. Of _course_ she had.

_“At least you’re loyal to one pack,”_ he sends grumpily, and feels her smile in return.

_“Far as I’m concerned, that pack is one and the same. Once you guys figure that out, we’ll be a damn sight happier.”_

There’s a nudge at his mind, and when he lets it in, it’s hesitant and shy. _“I am home,”_ Reid whispers, and he says it like he’s expecting to be rejected. _“I understand if you would prefer I keep my distance…”_

Of course he wouldn’t. He tells him so. When they leave the alley, they leave as three. Maybe a pack. Maybe.

They’ll see.

 

* * *

 

He’s been back two weeks before he’s alone with Hotch. At first, there’s Garcia and JJ and neither of them seem content to let him out of their sight. Then, there’s Henry and, as soon as the boy bursts into tears at seeing his godfather, Reid starts up too. JJ’s not far behind. He’s just glad Rossi wasn’t there to witness that particular show. Then, there’s Rossi, and Rossi hides his relief behind a false anger and bravado. Reid lets him. He can feel the emotion the older man isn’t showing, and that’s enough.

Morgan he tackles head on.

_“I’m okay, you know,”_ Reid says to him one day, and watches his friend stiffen. _“I thought you should… I want to be like we used to again. Before everything. Nothing Charlotte did to us should change that.”_

_“What did you do back there, anyway?”_ Morgan asks, and Reid wonders how to answer.

The truth. Or most of it, anyway. _“Helped. There’s still tension there. Some of Charlotte’s wolves want to reintegrate, others… can’t. The town wolves are of two minds about whether or not they should be allowed. Both sides trust me, I helped them cope. And they helped me, indirectly.”_

_“I’m glad,”_ Morgan says finally, and presses their shoulders together. _“I’m… really glad, kid.”_

And then there’s Hotch.

 

* * *

 

He goes to Reid’s apartment one night and settles awkwardly on the couch, wrinkling his nose uncomfortably. “You get used to the smell of mildew,” Reid says, pouring them both a drink and placing it carefully on the wonky coffee table. “It’s almost soothing now.”

“And wonderful for your lungs, no doubt,” Hotch comments, tilting his glass to watch the liquid glimmer. He watches Reid’s mouth fall open and the visible struggle the man undergoes to avoid slipping into lecture mode. And he doesn’t. He closes his mouth and just nods, smiling tightly.

Hotch swallows the alcohol and his disappointment all at once.

“I talked to Strauss,” Reid says finally, when the awkwardness between them begins to grate. He’s standing, uncertain, clearly not okay with sitting on the couch with inches to spare between them.

“And?” Hotch asks, knowing the answer. He’d already talked to Strauss too.

“Maybe. There are a lot of hoops she wants me to jump through. I might… it could be like normal again.”

Hotch slides over and leaves a wide space for Reid to sit, and, when he does, he makes sure they’re not touching. “It’s okay for some things to change,” he says to his empty glass, fingers slipping on the cool sides. “We’re not ever going to be the same, Spence, and that’s okay.”

There’s a long, low exhale of air next to him, and suddenly Reid is leaning gingerly against his side. “I know,” he murmurs. “Hotch… Aaron. I don’t… us. I never stopped wanting us. But… I don’t think I can. Be like that. Not for…” He shudders and Hotch fights the desire to wrap his arms around him and pull him close.

“I don’t care,” he says finally. “Not like that. It’s never been your body I loved, not ever. If, for us to be anything, it takes us ten years, I don’t care. I’ll wait. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Thank you,” Reid says finally, and they curl their fingers together.

They talk. It’s okay.

It’s a start.

He’ll start over a dozen times if that’s what they need. He’s never been one to give up.

 

* * *

 

Reid steps out the car and walks down into the thin trees. JJ sees him first. He smiles as she races up to him, twining catlike around his legs with her white fur gleaming in the summer sun. _Welcome back!_ she sends, and presses her nose to his hip. He flattens her ears under his palm and smiles.

Garcia is right behind him, her fur a darker gold than JJ’s but just as beautiful. _Hey, handsome,_ she says, and Morgan is right behind her. _It’s been too quiet here without you._

Morgan isn’t shy. He bounds up and rears, his muddy paws leaving dark streaks down Reid’s cardigan. _Hurry up, kid. Daylight’s wasting and you promised me a race. I’m not gonna be beaten by a skinny thing like you._

_He already beat you twice,_ Rossi says, yawning and rolling onto his back, his white belly sharply outlined by his slate-grey coat. _Give it up._

Reid shifts. It takes some dodging, but he manages to squirm his way out of the pile of canine paws and noses greeting him exuberantly, padding down the hill towards the two dark forms watching them from the tree line. They smell familiar. He knows this scent, the one surrounding them.

_“Finally,”_ Emily says, and licks his muzzle, before pacing away to leave them alone.

_“Run with me?”_ he asks Hotch shyly.

_“Thought you’d never ask.”_

Reid inhales the scent once more as they run together, memorizing it. He’ll always know it.

(home)

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited November, 2017.**


End file.
